


Warmth

by justrae2010



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dead People, Denial, Depression, Explosions, Funeral, Grief, Guilt, Hospitals, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Overdosing, Suicide Attempt, Trauma, Victor does not cope well, Widowed, major angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:02:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22202296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justrae2010/pseuds/justrae2010
Summary: Victor was living his dream life. Retired from skating and living a new life with Yuuri in America, Victor had traded in worrying about what jumps and spins to include in his programs to what restaurant he should treat his husband to for lunch. It was perfect. Everything was perfect. Everything was-Gone.One explosion rips Victor’s world apart - along with his husband - and he is left alone, trying to cope with life without his beloved Yuuri.It doesn't go well.Inspired by the five stages of grief.READ WITH CAUTION
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 84
Kudos: 166





	1. Loss

**Author's Note:**

> Written to Warmth by Bastille (hence the title)  
> I heard it on the Radio 1 Live Lounge after the Manchester Bombings and honestly, it was so moving. Had me sobbing in my car.  
> This is our world.  
> Don't hate me for this.

Victor couldn’t help but smile at the unmistakable taste of mint and chocolate on his husband’s tongue as he kissed him in front of the subway, deep and slow. His hands cupped Yuuri’s shoulders, clad in a ratty old blue hoodie that really should have had an ‘accident’ on one of Victor’s laundry days by now, and had only survived so long because how could he could resist _that look_ his husband gave him? Matched with Yuuri’s usual jeans and converse at least, it didn’t look as awful as it could do. When he wore jogging pants though - yeah, then it looked awful.

He recognised the peppermint of their toothpaste on Yuuri’s breath, grinning against his husband’s mouth. Yuuri must have swiped a square of chocolate on his way out of the apartment after he’d brushed his teeth.

Victor half wished he’d had the same idea, stroking his tongue lazily against Yuuri’s for another intoxicating taste.

“Hm,” Yuuri’s fingers tightened a fraction at Victor’s waist. “I’m going to be late.”

Victor just smiled, thumbs stroking over Yuuri’s cheeks before leaning down to steal another slow kiss. “Then be late.”

The hands travelled to his chest instead. “ _Victor…”_

It wasn’t the lateness, Victor knew as he smirked against his husband’s mouth, enjoying the last few seconds of being close to him before they parted for the day. People milled around them on their way down to the subway, parting around the couple like the red sea. They really had chosen a bad place to do their goodbye, right in front of the barriers where everybody spilled in from the street to get down to the trains that would take them to work, friends, family - whatever! Only Victor wanted to treasure every moment with his husband. He didn't want to be without him for a second longer than he had to.

He pressed his forehead against Yuuri's, gathering up the fingers resting against his chest in his own. They were cold. Kisses peppered over each chilly fingertip, lifting a pretty pink to the surface of Yuuri's cheeks. Victor committed it to memory, lips lingering over the gold band on Yuuri’s right ring finger.

Yuuri’s eyes were simply glowing as he sucked in a shaky breath. Victor wondered how he was going to get through the day without seeing them again before nightfall. “L-lunch?”

Victor had never said yes to anything so fast in his life.

One final kiss pressed into Yuuri’s cheek before Victor finally pulled himself away, stepping back a few paces to watch Yuuri pass through the subway barrier. He was so beautiful, standing out from all the ordinary people around him like an angel. Even in that hideous hoodie.

Victor’s eyes followed him every step of the way, hooked on the flow of his husband even as he walked away from him. He was proud to say he was hopelessly devoted to Yuuri Katsuki, in every way. When Yuuri paused at the back of the station and turned to wave, Victor honestly thought his heart might burst with delight. That glorious smile flashed at him one last time. In a blink, he was gone again, swallowed up in the crowd and vanishing down the crowded tunnel to the trains. Victor smiled after him for another half a minute even after he’d gone.

Sighing and digging his hands in his suit pockets, Victor finally turned away. In a matter of strides, he was back on the street.

His mind was already on lunch, dreamy smile on his face.

Where could he take Yuuri? Somewhere simple and dirty - like he knew Yuuri sometimes liked to treat himself to now that neither of them had competitions to stay in shape for - or somewhere expensive and refined? He did like to spoil Yuuri. He longed for it every waking moment. His mind was made up quickly. He was just in the middle of wondering where he could get a last minute reservation when –

The world behind him exploded.

Victor smacked to the ground.

_Hard_.

His forehead bounced off the pavement. There was no time to cry out as his head snapped up from the impact, eyes crossing and world spinning wildly. Pain blurred into shock, and back into pain again. Victor wasn’t sure which was more prominent as he stared down at the swaying slabs of concrete beneath him, still rocking with violent tremors. Were his hands shaking? Pain gritted the underside of his palms, blood dotting his vision as he tried to push himself off the ground without throwing up.

In the end, he managed a twist. He fell onto his back as the roar of heat behind him softened ever so slightly and braced on his elbows, pinpricks of pain dancing over his face. Victor peeled his eyes open. Ash rained down like snow, tangling in his silver bangs and settling over his cheeks with a singe that he could feel _burning._

The air tasted weird. Metallic. Heavy. Hot.

_Wrong_.

The groan bubbling in his chest never made it to his lips as something wet ran down the side of his face. Victor didn’t need to look to know it was blood.

Black smoke billowed from the subway.

Something was ringing in Victor's ears.

“Yuuri…”

It wasn’t just smoke. Victor saw the unmistakable flash of orange retreat back into the tunnel through the smog, flames from the subway licking ahead for oxygen. The station was on fire. The station had exploded.

_Yuuri_ was in that station.

Victor didn’t remember deciding to stand but his knees were shaky when he did, staggering against a taxi that had skidded to a halt in the middle of the road. He couldn’t look away from the subway.

It was a mouth of black. Smoke choked out the open entrance and whittled up into the clear sky, glass and bits of metal still raining down like snow. Brick and steel twisted out from the front of the subway, blown out from the blast and warped with heat. People ran. Faces black with ash bolted and stumbled out of the station, fleeing the wreckage behind them with wide, terrified eyes gleaming from their faces. Some were bloodied.

None were Yuuri.

Behind him, the world was chaos. Debris spat out onto the road, clanking down hard. Tires screeched. Metal crunched. And screaming. Someone was screaming. Victor didn't blame them, feeling his hands tremble and his horrified gasp choke in his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught more bodies slowly peeling themselves up off the pavement from where they’d fallen around him.

Victor was running before another thought crossed his mind, launching himself forward into the hellfire. “Yuuri!”

Smoke engulfed him instantly. He didn’t stop running even as the dirty air clogged his lungs and he coughed, eyes stinging at the ash in the atmosphere. He couldn’t see anything. His body moved on instinct – running, running, and vaulting over the barrier Yuuri had so calmly passed through not even five minutes ago.

The smoke was thicker.

Victor couldn’t see. Victor couldn’t _breathe_.

His steps stopped in their tracks as he gasped for air and scrunched his eyes shut, something sharp and merciless clawing at the inside of his throat. He coughed on instinct. It only made it worse. Bodies bounced off him, knocking him hopelessly off course as he doubled over and rasped for oxygen, arm wrapping around his middle as his stomach wretched.

His burning eyes scanned for blue. There was no blue. There was only black - everything was black, thick with ash and carbon. Black faces, black walls, black _air._ The shrill ringing still shrieked through Victor’s ears, cutting through the sound of his own coughing. His own _choking._

A body slammed into Victor’s shoulder, knocking him back against the wall with a pained thud. The back of his head bounced off the hard tiles.

If the world wasn’t confusing enough before, it certainly was now. Shapes blurred in front of him through the smoke and his eyes rolled back in his skull as his knees crumpled beneath him. His fingers clawed at the wall, but it didn’t do any good. Out of nowhere, they slipped.

He cried out as he hit the floor and something sharp dug into the back of his thighs. His hands felt tiny twists of metal around him, sharp and jagged like - no, they really _were_ nails. DIY nails, like from a hardware store. Victor pinched one between his thumb and forefinger and held it up to his face, metal still glowing with warmth under his touch. It slipped from his grasp, rolling away into the fog.

Victor’s head turned with it, further down the tunnel. He forced himself to his feet, ignoring the flare of pain ripping down the back of his thighs.

“Yuur- _eugh_!”

He doubled over, coughing. Smoke dove into his lungs, choking him as he stood there stunned and hurt, pain jarring up the backs of his legs when he tried to walk. Could he run? Could he _move?_

In that moment though, all he could think of was breathing. And the fact that it was impossible. His arm wrapped around his middle as he felt his stomach jolt, throat raw and - was that blood he tasted? Tears watered in his eyes, hand bracing back against the wall to stop him falling again. If he fell, he wasn’t sure he would get back up again. His mind swam in a daze.

_Yuuri..._

Something firm pressed on his shoulder.

His next breath was pure, cool oxygen. Victor’s eyes snapped open, gulping greedily at the air soothing his torn-up throat, shooting life down his limbs with every passing second. A strong arm wrapped around his waist, pulling him back. Victor didn’t have the strength to fight him. His fingers reached out and clung to the front of the man’s hi-vis jacket, holding on as they hauled him back towards the street.

His legs scrambled beneath him, but Victor wasn’t entirely sure what they were fighting for. His heart wanted to bolt in the madness after Yuuri, to not rest until he found him. His body just wanted oxygen.

And in the choked tunnel, there was none of that spare.

Victor’s hands pressed over his eyes as he was dragged out of the station, the sunlight blinding after the blackness of the tunnel. He felt himself get eased down to his knees, a hand pausing on his shoulder.

“You okay?” The paramedic asked. “Can you stand?”

The question didn’t matter.

Victor just coughed and fell forward, rolling onto his back and letting his body fight itself. How much carbon would be plastered on the inside of his lungs? Enough to hurt. Air was all around him, but his lungs pressed it out of his chest again before he had the chance to taste it. He wheezed and splattered with his hand in front of his face, and when his eyes had recovered enough to peel open, he saw his palm speckled with black and red.

The paramedic didn’t wait and Victor didn’t blame him. There were still more people in the tunnel, people worse off than Victor. There had been an _explosion._ Victor didn’t want to contemplate what that must have done to some people.

To his Yuuri.

“Yuuri…”

Tears leaked from his eyes and soothed the burning itch scratching at his corneas, coughs morphing into whimpers as his mouth downturned.

He kicked out with his legs in bitter misery, but his body shuddered limp as pain shocked down the backs of his thighs and his eyes snapped wide open. Smoke trailed over his head, staining the blue sky. Blood pounded in his ears impossibly loud, but not loud enough to drown out the sirens. Many, many sirens. What was happening? Everything was moving just _so fast_ around him. People rushed. More sirens blared. Victor heard the rush of pressured water and the screams of the wounded, sound ringing in his ears.

Still there was no Yuuri.

Something inside him snapped.

He didn’t feel any pain as he dragged himself to his feet, but felt the tightness down the back of his legs hindering his steps. It wasn’t enough to stop him though.

He carved a path through the chaos in a daze, steps surprisingly straight, mind frightfully clear. It scared him. He should be panicking, screaming, feeling his pain like everybody else … instead he just felt single minded focus, walking with purposeful steps like he did at work while his fingertips tingled with pins and needles. Yuuri had said felt that when he was having a panic attack.

A whimper bubbled in Victor’s chest at the sudden thought, Yuuri’s lingering smile flashing through his mind. _Yuuri…_

His shoes kicked something solid and heavy aside as he walked. Bodies lined the street and people ferried around them, pouring water, pressing any and all kinds of material they had on hand over wounds. There was so much red. Out of the corner of his eye, Victor caught the unmistakable bobbing of someone performing CPR. His heart cracked.

He honed in on the black mouth of the subway again, steps picking up their pace as much as his limping leg would allow him.

A heavy hand slapped into his chest.

Victor’s body folded over as the air knocked out of his lungs and he choked on the carbon that was left behind, instinctively clinging to the arm attached to the palm pressed against his chest. He coughed violently. More black. More red. The inside of his lungs burned, eyes stinging with unshed tears when the oxygen finally started to cling to his cells again.

He blinked down at the arm that had stopped him, following it back to a bulletproof vested chest, a police badge, and hard, steely eyes under a heavy brow that glittered with a barely held back panic of its own.

Victor’s heart fluttered.

“I have to go in there,” he said calmly. Too calmly, rasping so deep that Victor barely recognised his own voice. It took him a moment to realise that he’d spoke in Russian. He said it again in English.

What was wrong with him?

The officer just gave him a _look,_ eyes narrowing. 

Victor didn’t give him the chance to refuse him, stepping forward against the arm still pushing against his chest. He could see the blunt _‘no’_ in the officer’s eyes. Victor didn’t care. “My _husband_ is in there.”

He stressed the word like that would make all the difference, like the officer would just let him throw himself back into the furnace for that one single reason. Why couldn’t the man just _understand?_ The anger surged back through Victor all at once and his voice trembled with rage, already knowing the answer on the tip of the officer’s tongue.

He didn’t wait to hear it. Another scream hit his ears first. 

It could be Yuuri.

He brushed off the officer’s arm and pushed forward in one harsh movement, eyes jumping to the wreck of the station and stomach turning sickeningly. More people spilled out, some with flames still licking their hair and clothes. Mottled flesh. More blood. One was dragged out, body suspiciously still.

Victor managed to take three steps before another officer all but tackled him back. His knee buckled, pain shooting up the back of his thigh.

His teeth gritted against his cry of pain, heels digging into the ground. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t going anywhere. Victor didn’t take his eyes off the burning station as he fought forward, shoving the hands off him and all but screaming when more took their place. He lost count of how many officers there were. Uniformed bodies just surrounded him, filling his vision, slotting in the gaps in front of him until the station was gone from sight and a wall of badges were all that he could see. 

Still, he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. This was his _husband_ that he was talking about. He couldn’t just leave-

“Yuuri!”

The scream hurled from his mouth, wild and deranged. Like a wounded animal still fighting through the pain, through the fear. There was nothing human about it. If it had come from anybody else, Victor would have said they were insane, driven mad. He didn’t care what it looked like though. He just wanted to fight until he had Yuuri safely in his arms - that was all he wanted.

Tears beaded in the corners of his eyes - stinging - as he was finally forced to take a step back, knees all but giving out beneath him. It was the weakness the officer’s needed. One faltering moment was it.

Then it was all over.

Victor’s shoes scuffed against the ground as he was battled back, an arm under each of his armpits, dragging him back while he kicked and screamed.

His strength left him. He was lashing out at nothing as the officer’s carried him back, watching with horror as the plume of the station got further and further out of his reach, smaller and smaller, until Victor was across the square, being forced down into a wooden bench. His head snapped back as his hips slapped down on the seat, knocking him senseless for a moment. His body lolled, head swaying.

A click sharpened his focus - and a sharp pain on his wrist.

He blinked quick, blur of the world quickly clearing. One officer was already running back to the chaos. Another one was still with him, mouth moving but words blurring in Victor’s ears as he bared his palm at the Russian.

The soles of Victor’s feet found the flat of the ground, and pushed. 

He cried out as he was yanked back, something sharp digging into his wrist. He fell back against the bench, arm tugged at an awkward angle.

It took him a moment to find the source of his pain, blinking through the tears in his eyes and the sting from the ash. Silver. Metal. His arm stretched out, wrist all but pinned to the crook by the seat of the bench.

Handcuffs.

They’d handcuffed him to the bench.

Victor blinked up at the officer, feeling his cheeks wet with tears. _No..._

“Stay here!”

Like he had a choice.

He tugged against the handcuffs and hissed as the metal dug into the skin of the inside of his wrist, the bench holding firm on the other end of the chain. There was no way he was breaking out of it. A broken whimper bled from his lips - but it morphed into a scream as the officer turned and fled back to the scene, leaving Victor trapped.

Victor screamed. Cried. Sobbed. He twisted over the bench and clawed at his handcuffs, only doing more the dig the grit into the cuts in his hands as he did so. 

More tears.

The screams settled to whimpers.

He wasn’t sure how long he was struggling for but it felt like he lost the battle all too soon, falling back on the bench with a pained gasp of breath and losing his fingers in his hair. It was only then he noticed it wasn’t silver anymore. It was all but black with ash. His throat ran dry, staring at his darkened bangs against a backdrop of smoking sky with horror.

It made him think of Yuuri’s hair. 

Victor’s face crumpled at once, scrunching his eyes shut and hoping beyond hope that Yuuri would just be there. Somehow. Any second. Like he would just crouch down beside Victor with an apologetic smile and everything would be fine again, because he was _okay_.

It was crazy and far fetched, but it was all Victor had. His hand moved from his hair to his face, reaching over until his arm covered his eyes. He didn’t want to see anymore. Not without Yuuri.

He would be okay, he told himself. He had to be okay. How far down the tunnel had Yuuri been when it had gone off? It couldn’t have been more than five minutes that they’d been apart before it had all gone to hell, but how far Yuuri would have gotten would have depended on how fast the crowd was moving. Victor knew all too well. There were slow days and fast days. Sometimes you could be at the train in ten seconds, and others you could still be at the top of the stairs after ten minutes. It was all fate, all chance. Victor wondered what chance Yuuri had gotten that morning. 

He had to be fine, Victor repeated to himself, even if he couldn’t bring himself to say the words out loud yet. He had a twisted ankle maybe. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t been among the first to run out. Perhaps he’d hit his head against a wall like Victor had, unconscious but okay, just waiting for someone to pull him out. He might be a bit oxygen starved, but that would be okay. They could help with that, right? As long as he was okay. Victor would do whatever it took. He didn’t care if Yuuri had a broken leg or half his face burned off - just as long as he was okay!

As long as he was _alive._

A strangled sound wrestled from his throat at the word. He hadn’t meant to think it. Didn’t want to think it. To even consider that that wasn’t a given was just unbearable …

A sharp sound cut through Victor’s sobs.

It took a moment for him to realise what it was, to stop howling for just long enough to _listen._ Then he heard the melody, the words, the vibration buzzing against his hip - his pocket. His ringtone. His _phone._

Victor was upright in a second, clawing at his suit pocket. His phone. Of course, his phone. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? The fact that it was ringing now had to be a good sign. Nobody called him! Everyone he knew and liked texted to compensate for the time zone differences and Victor had no meetings at work that day that he was late for for the office to be calling him. There was only one person it could be.

Yuuri.

Victor nearly dropped the phone in his haste to pull it out of his pocket, fingers shaking and fumbling desperately to cling to it. It buzzed wildly in his hand. A relieved smile breathed over Victor’s lips.

His eyes blurred with fresh tears, characters on the phone screen dancing indistinguishably. It could have been Yuuri’s name - or it could have been the Russian President himself for all Victor could tell. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He hit the accept button on muscle memory, holding the phone to his ear half a beat later.

“Yuuri?”

Was his voice always so raspy?

_“N-no, um.”_ That wasn’t Yuuri. _“I-I mean, he’s here, but-”_

“Is he okay?”

Victor didn’t care about anything else.

Visions of Yuuri flashed in his mind; of him crammed in the back of an ambulance, knocked out and strapped to an oxygen mask; on the street in the recovery position; bundled on a stretcher already in the hospital, a kind nurse making the call…

The pause went on too long though.

Victor’s breath caught. “Is Yuuri okay?”

He pushed up on his feet again - only to be tugged back down by the handcuffs, the best he could manage an awkward squat from the bench. It didn’t help him at all. He still couldn’t see anything by the station, no hideous blue jumper or slap of black hair. No Yuuri. His heart jumped into his mouth, blood pulsing ridiculously in his ears. Why wasn’t the nurse - stranger, volunteer, whatever - answering?

Instead, they sniffled down the line. Victor would recognise that sound anywhere. _“Um, I’m sorry - I just… you’re the emergency contact o-on his phone. I thought someone should know.”_

A sickening feeling curled in Victor’s gut. “Know what?”

Okay, so worse than just a few bruises then. 

Maybe a badly broken bone. A limb that they wouldn’t be able to save. Maybe he was burned. Victor could live with that. They could get fancy crutches, the best plastic surgeons - anything!

Victor pinched his eyes shut, breaths catching in his throat. “Please...”

He wasn’t sure what he was asking for. 

And at the same time he was. The worst question. The one that could end the world as he knew it, break him more than any physical pain ever could. Victor didn’t ask but he did, and the pause on the other end of the line told him they knew exactly what it was that he was saying.

There was a moment of silence.

_“I’m sorry-”_

Victor didn’t hear the rest.

The phone clattered to the floor and Victor buried his face into his blackened hands, screaming, and screaming, and screaming.


	2. Denial

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *** WARNING : DESCRIPTION OF A DEAD BODY AHEAD (i forgot to add this to the tags earlier, sorry)
> 
> SKIP TO THE LINE IN BOLD TO AVOID. IT'S NOT FAR. 
> 
> Or search for 'A white sheet folded over the body.' to skip there

“Yeah, that’s …”

Victor’s voice caught, breath hitching. “That’s him.”

The world was dead.

It was broken and twisted. It was missing in places. Some parts were black and charred beyond recognition where others were an angry red, warped with heat into something monstrous. It didn’t move. It didn’t breathe.

The world was dead.

Because to Victor, his world was Yuuri.

Yuuri’s face was burnt almost beyond anything human as he lay there on the cold metal table, skin blacked except for a small section of his jaw that still clung to its original tan colour despite being warped and twisted with heat. The mottled skin crept down his throat to the neckline of his shirt where the fabric melted into his flesh, moulding into one. The once white shirt was scorched and blackened, ripped and holes burned in around the ribs. The hideous jacket must have been burned off. His trainers had gotten lost too. Yuuri’s shock black hair was still there though, thick with ash and grime before his hairline melted into his ruined face. It was sickening.

Victor felt the bile clawing up his throat, but wasn’t able to spit it out. Wasn’t able to move. Wasn’t able to speak. Wasn’t able to do anything but stare - at the dead body of the love of his life.

Until that moment, it hadn’t felt real.

Yuuri was dead.

Victor felt Yuuri’s driving licence slip out of his numb fingers and clatter lightly to the ground, the smiling face of plastic Yuuri Katsuki looking up from the mortuary floor. Victor couldn’t bear to meet it. He’d never see the real thing again.

As if the burns hadn’t been bad enough, he’d lost half an arm too. His left forearm had been blasted off halfway between the wrist and elbow, the skin of his back was all but non-existent now, and he had three broken ribs. They suspected the latter had been from clumsy resuscitation attempts. Yuuri hadn’t felt them. He’d been long gone by then.

The doctors had been quick to tell that to Victor, before anything; nothing could have been done to save his husband. 

Nothing.

**A white sheet folded over the body.**

It felt like Victor was choking all over again, lungs burning even more than when he’d been inside the burning tunnel. Had that pain been the last thing Yuuri had known before he’d died?

Victor prayed not.

He’d never know the answer.

Hands closed around his upper arms - gentle through the thick sleeves of his coat - but firm, peeling him back. They were nameless, faceless hands. Victor let them steer him back through the swinging door he’d come in through out into the hospital corridor, let them collapse him into one of the padded chairs lining the wall. Victor felt numb. He barely felt the thud of pain up the backs of his legs as they slumped against the chair, barely felt the splash of his tears on his fingers in his lap. What was the point? There was no more Yuuri to brush away the tears, to hug the pain away. He was gone.

Victor wasn’t sure what had happened. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten to the hospital, or how much time had passed.

The station was all over the hospital televisions, the only thing the news channels were talking about. Victor could hear it buzzing in his ears, could hear the clear voice of the newscaster and the never ending ring of distant sirens at the scene. On the screen, the station was gone. It was just a black hole into Hell - still smoking - nothing but death and ruin left where it once stood.

It had been an explosion, they said.

A bomb.

An attack.

It wasn’t just an accident - someone had done this on purpose. Someone had killed his Yuuri and left him dead on a table halfway across the world from his family. It was too cruel...

Victor felt sick - or at least, he wanted to. In reality, he just felt insanely blank. He heard things through a filter, saw the world through what felt like a sheet of clingfilm. He was detached, like it was him that had died and was still just about clinging to life, the imprint of his soul still drifting through the air amongst the living, breathing people around him.

For Victor, every breath was a curse. He felt it pull painfully at his lungs, the oxygen forcing its way past his cells with all the subtlety of barbed wire. He didn’t want it. He didn’t want any of it. He wanted to trade in the life it gave him and give it to Yuuri instead, willing to give anything for that door to open and Yuuri’s smiling face to pop through, tugging the ugly sweater over his head and laughing it off as an awful joke gone way too far.

It wouldn’t happen though. Victor wasn’t an idiot. He was numb, and in shock, and hurt, and angry beyond reason - but he wasn’t an idiot. He knew Yuuri was gone.

And wasn’t coming back.

His hands slapped over his face, sucking in a lungful of air. It tasted bitter. Cold and anaesthetised - dead. Victor whimpered into his palms, doubling over.

His pocket buzzed.

Victor pressed his eyes shut.

He knew who it was. He knew exactly who it was and he hadn’t had the guts to answer it for all the last two hours or so it had been ringing.

His hands curled into fists over his face, biting his nails into the skin of his palms. Usually it worked; usually it took away the sting from behind his eyes, brought his mind back into focus, sharpened him, prepared him for reality … he wasn’t ready for reality this time though. There was no pretending. It was too much to ever face up to.

Something choked and strangled forced its way up his throat and his body wracked through his sobs, every traitorous ring of his cell phone like a knife right through his heart.

He couldn’t do it.

How could he? How could he break the heart of the most wonderful woman in the world, the woman who had first taken him in for _Victor, The Man_ instead of _Victor, The Celebrity_ that first fateful day in Hasetsu. She could have turned him away. He might never have seen Yuuri again if she had. And now Victor was supposed to be the one to tell her that her darling boy was lying cold and still on a table just a door away from Victor while he himself still breathed air?

It wasn’t fair…

And it wasn’t fair that somewhere in Japan, in the middle of the night, a mother didn’t know if her child was alive or not.

 _She must have seen on the news_ , Victor thought. Just before they’d gone to bed, the family must have seen, must have seen it was in their city, must have thought of them … and Victor knew them - the phone wouldn’t stop ringing until he answered.

Victor’s head hung, tears leaking through his fists. His pocket still buzzed. It would never stop. It would never, ever stop.

The first time the phone had rang that day, Victor had attacked it. He had dragged it from his pocket like his life had depended on it, desperate to answer, desperate to hear a voice on the end of the line…

Victor slipped the phone from his pocket.

* * *

The funeral was beautiful.

Victor barely remembered it, but he remembered that it was beautiful. Casket closed. Gold plaque with Yuuri’s name shining in the sunlight. Not even a bird chirped as he was lowered into the ground in a pit of blue roses. Victor’s roses. It was the closest Victor could do to be with him save from leaping into the hole himself, letting the shovels fall.

Victor couldn’t bring himself to even cry.

Everybody expected him too.

Everybody spoke to him in hushed tones, gave him a wary look like he might shatter before their very eyes if they so much as said _hello,_ and Victor resented them for it. He resented them all just for being there.

Even his friends. Christophe, Yurio, Yakov.... people that had travelled halfway across the world to say goodbye to Yuuri but Victor wished they hadn’t. He didn’t want to see them. He didn’t was their pity. He only wanted Yuuri’s family there, because only they knew how it felt, how it _really_ felt. They didn’t speak to him – not because they hated him, nothing but love in their tear stained eyes whenever they looked at him – but they knew that there were no words to say, that nothing could make it any easier.

Yuuri was gone.

And as Victor stood by Yuuri’s graveside, the last to leave as everybody else trickled away with quiet words and even quieter tears, the Heaven’s opened.

One fat raindrop dropped onto Victor’s nose, then another on his cheek, then another on his forehead until they rained thick and fast from the dark clouds above, the once sunny skies nothing but a dream. Victor didn’t look up, didn’t move. He just stood still, letting the rain seep into his clothes, drenching his hair, drowning his soul…

 _Poetic, really_ , he thought without a hint of a smile to himself; like the world itself was crying for Yuuri, mourning the loss with him.

They’d buried him in America, downtown near their apartment. _So Yuuri could be close to his true home,_ Mari had explained. Because wherever Victor was had always been home for Yuuri, and America was the first fresh start for both of them after they’d retired, a place not just Yuuri’s or Victor’s, but _theirs._

Deep down, Victor knew that they’d chosen it because they knew that Victor would need Yuuri more than they would. And if he was honest with himself, he knew it too.

It didn’t stop him from gripping the bouquet of blue roses in his hand a little too tightly though. It didn’t stop the hitch in his breath or the tightness strapping around his lungs. Knowing didn’t make it any better, didn’t make it any easier. It still hurt. It still stung. 

He turned on his heel, smart shoes slipping slightly in the loosening mud, eyes dark and low, avoiding everyone he passed. He couldn’t talk. He could barely breathe, turning his back on Yuuri when it went against all his instincts, body crying out to turn back and flee back to his side. Victor knew he couldn’t though – there were reporters around, making a tribute to the late great Yuuri Katsuki of figure skating. Flowers lined the cemetery fence from fans – a shrine that broke Victor’s heart so much he couldn’t even look at it as he stormed past, every muscle in his body locked tense.

He picked out his car in the car park, making a beeline for it. He just wanted to be gone, wanted to be home, to be out of the embrace of death – anything!

He slammed the car door shut harder than he needed to, roses tossed over to the passenger seat and sending petals scattering. 

Yuuri would have scolded him for that. He’d always liked the car meticulously tidy even though he hardly ever drove it. Victor had never really minded though – since it had been a gift to him from Yuuri, bought with the prize money from his last Grand Prix gold medal before he’d retired.

Now though, it was just a symbol of his widowhood and Victor resented it for that. He resented the sleek black style, once so stylish now just a mockery of his mourning. He resented the bright, clean interior, shining at him like nothing was wrong. He resented everything, reminding him too much of Yuuri and not enough at the same time.

Victor’s hands slapped on the steering wheel, gripping harder than necessary. His knuckles clenched white, stormy blue eyes staring at the rain pelting the windshield. 

Something welled in his chest, painful like barbed wire. It cut deeper with every breath, every push of his chest, cruel and relentless. Victor ran his hands over his face, knuckles clicking as he forced them away from the steering wheel.

When they pulled back, tears clung to his fingertips.

It was the final straw.

A squeak broke through his lips and it was only then he realised that it had been quivering, feeling his mouth slack around messy undignified sobs and watching his tear stained hands shake and tremble before his eyes. 

It was over.

His hands slapped over his mouth just in time to muffle his scream as he doubled over in his seat, forehead resting against the steering wheel and wide eyes staring blurrily between his knees. What had he just done? He’d just buried his husband. And there was no getting him back, no digging him back out of the ground. It was done. It was over.

Victor’s breath cut short too quickly, hitching in his lungs and panic shooting through his system. Fear gripped him, fear in every fibre of his being trembling, screaming at him…

He had to get out of there.

He was still whimpering as he pulled himself upright and turned the key in the ignition, engine roaring to life and tires screeching as Victor pulled away into the road.

* * *

“Where’s that nice young husband of yours?”

Victor only just stopped his plastic smile from cracking, only just stumbled back into the lazy beat of the slow mambo with his elderly partner as the question hit him like a slap to the face. Of course, Edna wouldn’t know. It wasn’t her fault.

“Oh, he’s …” Victor searched for the words, praying Edna didn’t notice the slight quake in his voice. “He’s not well. He sends his apologies.”

Everything around him was the same as normal, just as if Yuuri was really just sick at home rather than… not. Victor didn’t want to think about it. Couldn’t think about it. And when Thursday night had come by, Victor had been getting his dancing shoes out from the closet for their weekly couples dance class before he’d even realised he wasn’t a couple anymore.

He hadn’t stopped himself though.

Instead, he’d left his mind at the door of his apartment, letting a mask slip over his face as he’d hit the pavement, and relished the relief of stepping into a new life, a new facade where everything was okay and maybe for a little while – even just an hour – he could get Yuuri back again.

“Oh, the poor thing,” Edna cooed, her little hands tiny in Victor’s as they shuffled more than danced together. Victor didn’t mind. It was easier on his knees. “He’s always such a nice man.”

_Present tense._

Again, Victor’s heart skipped a beat and it took everything in him not to jolt. It wasn’t Edna’s fault. She didn’t know.

Victor savoured the moment. The music washing over the town hall, the couples dancing around them at various degrees of intricacy, the laughter, the chatter… he was very much aware that his secret wouldn’t stayed buried forever. Tomorrow, or next week, or next month, Edna would see the news. She would see Yuuri splashed amongst the list of the victims, and she would _know._ And Victor would never be able to come back, out of shame or hurt, or guilt – something. 

So he forced himself to smile, forced himself to keep stepping, and held onto Edna’s frail seventy five year old hand just a little bit tighter. “Yes, he is.”

* * *

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“Are you eating well?”

“Fine.”

“And how are you sleeping?”

“Fine.”

It was the only word Victor knew, slumped in the chair in the doctor’s office that he would give anything to have avoided if Hiroko’s tear filled eyes hadn’t persuaded him before she’d gone back to Japan. 

He knew she was worried. Hell, they all were – and in the back of Victor’s head, he knew that he should be too, but he just… wasn’t.

He didn’t want to think about it. 

He didn’t make any effort for the doctor. He knew it was part of the reason he was there in the first place, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. It wasn’t any of the doctor’s business why he hadn’t shaved in a week or why his clothes were wrinkled, why he walked with a slouch or why there were dark, heavy bags under his eyes.

The doctor knew though. Of course, he knew – he had that condescending sympathy in his eye that betrayed him. 

_Pity._

Victor hated it.

“Mr Nikiforov,” the doctor said gently, eyes hidden behind the shine in his glasses as he leaned forward and clasped his hands on his desk. “It is natural to feel depressed after a grievance or trauma. You have been through both. It wouldn’t be any weakness if you wanted some hel-”

“Are we done here?” 

Victor just glared, words barbed and short. _Dangerous._

He felt dangerous, brimming with a rage that curled his hands into fists in his lap, that pursed his lips, sent fire racing through his veins. What he’d give to be able to hit something, destroy it in a million pieces…

The doctor sighed, pen scratching over his prescription pad. “I’m prescribing you something to help you sleep. And I’m recommending a course of counselling therapy.”

Victor took the pills. 

He didn’t take the help.

* * *

The flat was deafening. Victor made sure of it, night and day – not that Victor could tell the difference anymore with the blinds constantly drawn down – music blaring from his phone in every angry genre, in every language, desperate to drown out his own thoughts. It was all he wanted. To be able to think of nothing but his pounding headache and fast heartbeat, to feel nothing but the base thrumming through his body from the vibrations through the floor.

It hurt – but it made him feel _alive_. 

He couldn’t bear to think. 

Thinking always hurt, mind straying to things he’d rather not remember – like _him._ Eventually, it hurt even to remember his name. 

Instead, nothing else existed but for the aggravating noise and the occasional shuffle to the bathroom. It was all he moved for. It was all he lived for.

His existence lay on where he stayed draped on the couch with an arm thrown over his eyes, blocking out the world and whatever harrowing truth reality wanted him to face. He couldn’t bear it. 

The TV stayed off. He’d turned it on one day out of habit more than anything else but one look at the news – and their relentless coverage of the attack – and Victor felt his chest crumple, rib cage crushing like there was a vacuum inside his heart. He couldn’t bear to face it again. Victor had seen reports like that before, knew what they contained. Tributes. Victims. _Him._

Victor wasn’t ready for that yet.

He knew it wasn’t healthy, but he didn’t care.

He was long past caring about what he _should_ do. Yakov never failed to try and lecture him about it every time he came over to bring Victor food that he wouldn’t eat and a glass of water that he wouldn’t touch for hours until after drinking half a bottle of vodka first. It didn’t work like it used to though. Victor just stared ahead against the shouting, vacant.

What was the point anymore?

He didn’t want to do it alone…

Few others came. 

Yurio stopped by every afternoon, turned Victor’s music down to a bearable level and sat with him on the couch, talked about things Victor didn’t listen to – couldn’t listen to – in a tone that would have broken Victor’s heart if he still had one that worked, cleaned his dishes for him and left. Victor knew he should feel sorry for the kid. He didn’t. He couldn’t let himself open that box.

Mari came by sparingly – lingering in America before following her parents home to Japan in the next week – but she never said anything.

Until one day, she did.

She shut the music off with a jolt, sudden silence slapping Victor in the face.

“Yuuri wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself, you know.”

Victor winced at his name, not prepared for the stab of hurt that bolted through his chest.

“You think he would like to see you like this?”

Victor didn’t even need to question it.

 _No_.

The Yuuri that wrapped Victor up in three blankets the second his nose run. The Yuuri that sung Victor lullabies in Japanese when he couldn’t sleep at night. The Yuuri that did ridiculous things just to make Victor smile again after a bad day.

Tears welled in Victor’s eyes at the thought, swallowing thickly at the ceiling. He never paid enough attention to those little touches before. Now more than ever, he wished he had. 

It would break Yuuri’s heart to see Victor as he was.

Living on the couch because the bedroom held too many memories. Unshaven and barely eating, half-drunk half the time and too afraid to close his eyes and sleep. He couldn’t control his thoughts in his dreams. The idea terrified him. He was a mess and he knew it. A shell of a person. Alive - but he wasn’t _living_.

He didn’t want to without Yuuri.

“He would want you to be happy...”

The sob bubbled out of Victor’s throat before he could stop it, but his hand didn’t fly to his mouth – it went to cover his eyes, scrunching them shut tight. His spare hand reached absentmindedly along the floor for the bottle of vodka he knew was there somewhere. It always helped, always chased the thoughts away that Victor didn’t want to face thinking…

This time though, his fingers closed around nothing.

There was no escape.

Victor’s lip quivered as he heard the bottle clink somewhere behind his head, so close to his ear it was almost mocking. _Mari_ … even though he knew she was right, it didn’t help…

And as soon as Mari’s hand touched his shoulder, Victor felt his soul crack.

He felt like he was suffocating. Chest tight, air rasping at his lungs but no oxygen going through his system. He couldn’t breathe, body heavy and ribcage locked like his body just physically didn’t want to work anymore.

Tears stung at the corners of Victor’s eyes, feeling his face scrunch up messily. He never cried like this. Never let anyone see him cry like this. Even Yuuri had been kind enough to hold him but turn his face away when Victor ugly cried, knowing how humiliated and vulnerable it made Victor feel...

Now, it didn’t matter. Victor couldn’t hold himself together anymore. He sobbed, and from the side of his face not covered by his hand, Mari saw it all.

Victor didn’t care.

He just reached up to her hand on his shoulder and held on with an iron tight grip, feeling how cold his hands were in comparison to her warm fingers. Victor didn’t know what else to do.

Because it hurt worse than he’d ever imagined it ever could.

And Victor knew it was only the beginning.

Yuuri wasn’t sick. 

He wasn’t away.

He wasn’t working.

He was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. Victor had never dared let himself think it before, always lying to himself to cope, to get through each painstaking hour however he could to avoid facing the truth…

He heaved in a ragged breath, air tearing at his throat and burning at his lungs, wetness dabbing at the corner of his eyes with tears Victor didn’t have the heart to wipe away.

Yuuri was gone.

Victor’s voice never usually trembled. He was always the sure one, steady as a rock while Yuuri quaked and quavered. 

This time, his voice shook like a leaf, trembling before he’d even opened his mouth as his hand dragged away from his face and he spoke for the first time in three days. His watery eyes lifted to Mari. He could read her sympathy even from upside down.

For once, he didn’t push it away.

“D-did you see the news?”

He couldn’t pretend any longer.


	3. Anger

_ “Vitya… I’m sorry…” _

_ The door closed softly from the bedroom, but Victor wasn’t willing to open his eyes from his place on the couch. He could feel Yuuri in the doorway behind him. Bug eyed. Biting his lip. Apologising for their fight. It didn’t happen often, but it always ended in the same way… _

_ Victor was hunched forward on the couch, shoulders tense and elbows braced on his knees. His hands clasped together, knuckles white. _

_ It had taken every ounce of willpower he’d had to hold himself back from running after his husband. _

_ The minute the bedroom door had slammed shut, he’d been filled with regret. _

_ He shouldn’t have got annoyed. _

_ He shouldn’t have shouted. _

_ He shouldn’t have blamed Yuuri. _

_ …but he had, and Yuuri had shouted right back at him. Rightly so, Victor now thought, feeling cold and empty without his husband’s loving touch to warm him. _

_ The worst bit was that a part of him was still angry. A part of him still wanted to kick, and scream, and cry until Yuuri broke and admitted that it had all been his fault in the first place. Victor wasn’t mean, but damn, he could be petty. _

_ But then warm, tentative arms wrapped slowly around him from behind - Yuuri touching his forehead between Victor’s shoulder blades - and Victor knew he’d rather cling to that over holding any grudge any day. His heart skipped a beat, sucking in a gasp as warmth bolted through his system. Yuuri was worth it. He was always worth it. _

* * *

Victor jerked awake with a gasp, chest tight and cold sweat sticking his shirt to his skin. His face felt stiff, cheeks waxen from his dried tears. His throat felt raw. His neck felt stiff. Lifting his head, the pieces started to slot into place. The vodka bottle on the coffee table, the glass lying on its side on the floor from where it had fallen from Victor’s sleepy fingers, the crushing cavern in the middle of his chest that he just couldn’t seem to escape no matter how much he drank, or cried, or screamed-

The air choked in his throat on his next breath, fresh tears bubbling in the corners of his eyes. They hurt. It  _ burned. _

Because it had all been a dream.

The anger hit him with all the force of a freight train, slamming into him hard, and fast, and uncontrollable. His teeth gritted, chest tight… and the cry he let out as he flipped the table with a resounding crash was barely human.

* * *

Everything changed after Mari’s visit.

There was less wallowing, fewer tears, no more simpering and staring emptily at the ceiling as if waiting for a miracle.

More of Victor’s days consisted of sitting on the couch with his hands clasped together in a white knuckled grip, elbows braced on his knees and glaring eyes bearing into the television screen that he never turned off. What he once feared, he now craved. He needed to see it, to drill it into his bones and  _ remember _ what had happened, letting it fire through his veins like a red hot poker lighting him up and scorching him from the inside out. It made him feel something - something to distract him from the loss.

The channel was set to the news twenty-four-seven. At night, daytime, meagre meal times – all day Victor needed to see that burning inferno that had taken his Yuuri, needed to confront it.

The station had long blackened now that the fire had gone out, a gaping black hole where the underground had once been. It was a bleak image, the whole area surrounding it still roped off and the road blocked.

It became his life; checking the news, staring at the station, burning the faces of the attackers into his brain...

He would have killed them, if they hadn’t died in the explosion. Lucky for them – Victor would have ripped them apart with his bare hands if they had not, would have made them suffer far more than their quick end in the subway. He wasn’t normally a violent person… but the  _ things _ he wanted to do to them, how badly he wanted to make them hurt…

If he was himself, it would have frightened him.

Victor wasn’t himself though.

When the TV news moved on, Victor moved to his laptop. He stalked the story meticulously, hounding for every detail like a madman.

It wasn’t just news channels.

It was articles. Facebook. Forums – anything and everything that had an update. He didn’t even care about authenticity anymore. Whispers and rumours were enough now, anything new, anything that might fuel the rage burning inside him. It helped. At least, he thought it helped. He felt  _ something. _

After a few days, he started picking himself up again. He changed his clothes. He picked up the broken glass from the shattered coffee table. He drank a glass of water.

It wasn’t much…but it was a start.

It didn’t always go well.

When he went to make himself a cup of tea one day and grabbed a mug blindly from the cabinet without thinking, not realising his mistake until he was staring at the tacky tourist St Petersburg mug that Yuuri had bought when he’d first moved into Russia with him, choking on nothing and feeling like he was going to be sick…

He shaved on an impulse – until one nick had sent him into a flurry of rage that had launched the shaving kit across the bathroom with a snap of plastic and shattering of broken tiles.

A dog barked from the street outside… and Victor grabbed for the vodka bottle as memories of his beloved dog came flooding back all at once, all the pain and loss hurting so badly that Victor just couldn’t put it into words.

So he turned on the news again.

Victor didn’t care. He was angry. He was angry at himself being angry. He never got in rages like that, never lashed out so violent and unprovoked… now, he did. Now, he wanted to scream and break things and see blood until the world hurt just as much as he did.

It wasn’t fair they got to go on like nothing had happened while he couldn’t, while he was left with a glaring empty hole in his heart that would never go away.

He resented the survivors on the news reports for their privilege, for their luck.

Why couldn’t Yuuri have been lucky that day? Why did he not deserve to survive like they had? It could have been someone else – anyone else! – just not his Yuuri…

He didn’t know who had given the news channel the picture they had of his husband.

Brilliantly smiling, flush high on his cheekbones and eyes sparkling with delight and life… it hurt to look at. It hurt more than anything. He hated whoever had picked it, hating them with a passion that burned deeper than all of the rest of his rage put together.

Because it was from their wedding day.

Victor’s fingers closed tightly around the paper in his fist, the crumpling sound satisfying. It was nowhere enough though. It didn’t hurt enough, didn’t break enough, didn’t  _ shatter- _

He threw the crumpled take out menu away from him with as much force as he could muster, the burning rage inside him only made worse when all the paper did was flutter silently back down to the floor. It wasn’t enough. It was never enough-

_ “It wasn’t enough.” _

Victor’s breath caught.

He froze where he stood, fingers poised around the neck of the bottle he’d moments away from swiping off the floor. His head jerked up so fast his neck clicked.

_ “Our response to events that day wasn’t enough,” _ the man on the television was saying - barely old enough to be called a man. Tanned skin, determined eyes, a little scruffy in the face, but expression so passionate it hardly mattered. “ _ We needed more firefighters, more medics – bodies were strewn out over the street and there was nobody to help them. I was one of the volunteer nurses that day. I saw it first hand.” _

Victor couldn’t breathe.

That voice… it was so painfully familiar, burned into his brain for the rest of his life. He could never mistake that voice, could never forget it. 

_ “This man was known to authorities,”  _ the nurse went on to the camera. Victor hated him. He seemed so sure of himself, so entitled -  _ who the hell was he?  _ “ _ Someone knew. Somebody still knows-” _

_ I thought someone should know- _

_ “I’m sorry, but someone needs to be accountable-” _

_ I’m sorry- _

Victor knew that voice.

He hadn’t thought much about it until then. He’d forgotten… but now he remembered, it seared through him like a brand, the hurt fresh and blazing. This was the man that had called him from Yuuri’s phone. This was the man that had been with his husband. This was the man who had been unable to save him.

This was the man who was responsible for letting his husband die.

He could feel himself trembling, hands clenched into fists so tight his nails were digging into the heels of his hands. It hurt. He didn’t stop though. He didn’t want to stop, pushing himself slowly to his feet. His jaw gritted hard, teeth grating together in hate. 

Victor could kill him.

That once nameless, faceless demon was now right before his eyes, mocking in his righteousness. 

He looked like the kind of kid that volunteered at the hospital for some humanitarian effort to put on his resume - not because he cared. Yuuri was nothing to him. He didn’t care - and if he did, it was too late. Victor didn’t care. He really didn’t care. It was just a job for that man - for Victor, it was his  _ life. _

His eyes flickered down the television screen, drinking in the details.

The report was live.

Outside the town hall.

A protest criticising the government's investigation of the attack...

He only paused to pull his trainers on at the door - not bothering with the laces - before he hit the streets, guiding himself with terrifying single mindedness. The town hall wasn’t far. It wasn’t far at all.

He started off walking, hands dug deep in his pockets and eyes murderous. People parted like the Red Sea from his path, wisely steering clear.

Then he walked faster.

Then he broke into a run.

He pulled his hands free, breaths rasping in his lungs with every step. He had barely left the flat since the attack, let alone exercised. It hurt to move, body already stiff and tired. Victor pushed on anyway, arms pumping and legs sprinting as fast as his body would allow. His calves stung. His side bit with a stitch. He didn’t stop. He didn’t dare stop. He couldn’t - the pain would never stop, so why should he?

For the first time in weeks, Victor started to feel alive. He could feel his blood pumping hard in his veins, feel the cold sting of the air as it rasped down his throat. His skin felt warm - too warm. 

It reminded him of his and Yuuri’s old skating days in St Petersburg; how hot and sweaty they’d be when they’d come home from their respective workouts, coming together in sweat salty kisses and the hum of exercise blending seamlessly with the fanning flame of arousal as they peeled out of their sweaty clothes, laughing between kisses, clinging to each other despite the stickiness of their skin...

Victor blinked fast as he snapped back to the street, eyes burning. He couldn’t think about that now. That life was gone. It was taken from him.

And he was about to get his vengeance.

The crowd was bigger than he’d expected. The TV footage had made everything look different, the people louder than that had been on screen, banners and placards waving through the air, everyone more irritated - less peaceful than the news crew would have had him believe.

Luckily, Victor didn’t care.

He barged through the crowd without a second pause, shoulders bumping roughly with people he ploughed past. Someone shouted at him - he barely heard them.

He kept his eyes above the heads - on the town hall badge that had been in the background of the broadcast. That would be where he would find his nurse. That was where he needed to be.

He already knew that this was going to be bad.

There was no way he should get anywhere near the cameras - he was still moderately famous, even with his skating days long behind him. And with his lack of self care lately… it was a disaster waiting to happen, surely. The Victor Nikiforov who had never been anything but perfect in his prime, now wild and raging in dirty sweaty pants, hair unkempt, and unshaven.

It was a bad idea. He shouldn’t be here, he definitely shouldn’t do any of this, should turn around go back to his apartment and tear that apart instead while he still could-

But then he saw  _ him _ and Victor’s blood went cold.

He was smiling now - the bastard was  _ smiling _ \- shaking hands with the news reporter and God, Victor felt sick. The man could smile while Victor’s life was falling apart.

Victor surged forward.

He didn’t care anymore. 

He ducked under the arms of the police holding back the crowd, leapt over the barrier between them and the news crews, running as fast as he could with his eyes fixed on the smug, stupid nurse-

Victor’s arm pulled back, fist clenched.

The nurse’s eyes barely had time to flash with alarm when they saw Victor before his fist was ploughing into his cheek, sending the nurse spinning.

Victor didn’t stop.

He scrambled after him, one hand fisted in the front of his shirt and pinning him to the floor while the other punched him again, and again, and again - punching until Victor saw red, until he saw blood. 

The sting on his knuckles told him it could belong to either of them.

Victor didn’t care.

He could hear himself screaming, but couldn’t understand what he was saying - if he was saying anything! He couldn’t tell, clawing and screaming like something wild. He didn’t care. He just wanted it to hurt - to hurt as much on the outside as it did on the inside, and he wanted the nurse to feel it too. He could have saved Yuuri. Why didn’t he  _ save  _ Yuuri?!

Someone pulled him away.

Victor screamed as they did, fighting and clawing against the hands fisted in his shirt and arms looping under his own, hauling him off the nurse. He kicked and fought, not wanting to go, not finished - it wasn’t enough.

He cried out as he was forced on his knees, arms twisted behind his back. He heard the familiar click of handcuffs, a voice barking the Miranda rights in his ear the way he’d heard in movies. He wasn’t strong enough to fight them - after barely eating, half drunk, not leaving the apartment since the incident, Victor had been half amazed he’d been made it down to the town hall. His strength was exhausted now though. He had nothing left.

Tears stung in his eyes, tasting salt on his lips. He was crying. God damnit, he was crying again…

The cuffs hurt around his wrists, metal digging into the soft flesh where he instinctively tried to fight against them, tried to pull his hands apart so he could carry on his rampage. He didn’t want to stop. The image of Yuuri’s still body still burned in the back of his brain and he didn’t want to remember it, wanted to scream, and break, and see a new red that would drive the image away at last…

His knee knocked against the door of the police car as the officers pulled him upright, bundling him into the back. Victor wrestled against them, not wanting to go.

He could feel he’d have cuts and welts on his wrists by the time the cuffs came off, could feel the bruises stiffening the back of his shoulder blades. His throat hurt. Was he still screaming? He was still crying - he could feel the tell-tale ache in his eyes betraying him. He didn’t know what was happening anymore - nothing felt real.

His head span as the door slammed shut, blocking the world off outside. The yells of the crowd were muffled, flashes of cameras dulled. Victor felt pins and needles in his fingertips, pain sparking behind his eyes. 

He was going to pass out.

Outside the car, one of the officers paused, hand pressing against the glass. What did he want? Had he recognised him? The famous Victor Nikiforov laid low.

Victor lifted his head from lolling, blinking his eyes into focus to try and warn the officer off, to stop  _ looking  _ at him.

But then, Victor recognised him too.

It was the policeman who had cuffed him to the bench. 

The one who had stopped him going back into the subway.

The one who had saved him from killing himself after his husband in that blackened hole of a subway station. 

Pain shredded through Victor’s chest at the memory, breath freezing in his chest, and eyes welling up fresh. He should have let him go, Victor couldn’t help but think. He should have let him go back in, let him choke and suffocate, let him go… he could have been with Yuuri if the officer had let him go.

Victor let out a wounded whine and doubled over in anguish, surrendering to the hurt as the car pulled away.

* * *

“He’s not pressing charges,” Victor heard the policeman say quietly down the corridor of the police station. Not quietly enough. “I talked him out of it. He wasn’t too badly hurt, just a black eye and some bruising. Nothing broken. Nothing that will last. He’s lucky.”

Victor wasn’t sure if they knew he could hear them from his cell, but he didn’t care. He had nothing else to do.

He sat on the bench, hands clasped tight together and elbows braced on his knees - all he had to do was listen. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there. He had woken up in the cell, not sure how long he’d been out before he’d come back round, stiff, and bruised, and  _ aching _ . He felt exhausted. Like he’d been used as a punching bag. He didn’t entirely mind - it gave him something to focus on instead of the absolute boredom. His leg bounced restlessly, itching to get out of the cramped police cell. 

“He’s not well, sir,” the officer went on, in a tone that Victor  _ loathed.  _ Pitying. He didn’t want anyone’s pity. “He needs help.”

“I understand, officer,” Yakov’s voice answered. “Thank you.”

Victor groaned silently in his head - Yakov. Of all people, they’d called Yakov. Yakov always did chew him out the worst when he’d screwed up.

And boy, had he screwed up today…

Victor should never have left the apartment.

* * *

The drive back to Victor’s apartment was quiet.

Victor sat curled up on the passenger seat while Yakov drove, limp like a doll and eyes staring vacant out the window. His apartment wasn’t far. They could have walked. Victor guessed Yakov didn’t want to risk him drawing any more attention to himself than he already had though...

“What were you thinking, Vitya?” Yakov growled in Russian when they stopped at a traffic light, glancing across the car.

Victor didn’t even blink.

“I was thinking I’d kill him,” he said without hesitation, voice scarily calm as he said it. “He killed Yuuri.”

“He didn’t kill Yuuri, you stupid boy,” Yakov snapped back, just as blunt and ruthless as ever. Victor expected nothing less. “Some suicidal maniac killed Yuuri, but that boy wasn’t to blame. You’re lucky he didn’t press charges.”

Victor pressed his lips together. “I don’t care.”

“You  _ should  _ care.”

He knew he should. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew everything he felt was wrong and bad, and he should stop it, but… he just didn’t want to. What was the point?

It didn’t matter anymore.

He didn’t mind going to jail. He didn’t mind getting hurt. He didn’t care about if he hurt someone else - especially someone like the nurse, someone who could have done something to help his Yuuri and just… hadn’t. It hadn’t been enough. Now, it wasn’t enough to stop him.

“Don’t do anything stupid, boy,” Yakov glared, as if he could read Victor’s mind. “The world doesn’t need to lose you too.”

Victor already knew he wasn’t going to listen.

* * *

At home, the rage came flooding back. He tried to ignore it. He tried to think something else, to feel something else - but Yuuri was  _ everywhere _ in the apartment. It was impossible to think of anything else.

And Victor hated him for it. 

He launched Yuuri’s mug across the room with a scream, hurtling it at their medal cabinet and feeling a primal sense of satisfaction when the glass and china exploded.

It was Yuuri’s fault. How could he? How could he have  _ left  _ Victor?! They’d promised to spend the rest of their lives together. They’d planned a house, dogs, children – everything! And now Yuuri had just … left him. It wasn’t fair. How could Yuuri do this to him? If they’d have just had five more minutes in bed like Victor had wanted that morning, they could still be together. They’d still be walking up to the station when the blast went off. They’d be battered and bruises, shocked - but Yuuri would still be alive.

It was all his fault.

And Victor resented him for it.

His Yuuri had always been selfish. Maybe not intentionally, maybe not maliciously - but selfish nevertheless. And now he’d left Victor here alone.  _ He’d  _ done it.

He could have clung on a little longer. He could have  _ tried _ fighting for his life. Why hadn’t he been able to hold on? Surely, he could have. For Victor’s sake - if he’d really loved Victor - he could have.

But he hadn’t. 

He’d given up, instead of fight to stay with Victor. 

Victor would never forgive him for it. He wouldn’t - he promised himself as he knocked back yet another glass of vodka, trying to placant the rage, trying to fill a hole with his destruction that just seemed to cave deeper and deeper with every shatter.

And then Yuuri’s phone rang.

Victor span on his feet, eyes flashing dangerously at the phone on the kitchen counter. That was it - he couldn’t take it anymore. 

It had sat there since Victor had come back from the hospital, the day he’d seen the body. Miraculously, it had still been alive. Victor hadn’t touched it. He hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t been able to face it. Most of the time, it was easy to forget. It sat there, silent and forgiving. The last few nights though… 

Victor could hear the vibrations buzz on the marble table top, sound sharp and shrill through the apartment with every jolt. Someone was calling.

He’d noticed it the last few evenings. Someone called. He never checked the number, but he guessed it was the same person. They called at the same time - outside of business hours - letting the line ring, and ring, and ring until the phone went to voicemail and finally stopped buzzing.

Most of the time, Victor ignored it. Normally, he’d close his eyes and block his ears, and pretend nobody was calling his dead husband. 

Not tonight. 

He didn’t know who was calling but he didn’t care. Yuuri was gone. He was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. 

Victor screamed as he grabbed the phone off the counter and launched it across the room, whipping so fast through the air that he didn’t even see it land. He heard the thud of the impact though - a dull, unsatisfying smack - saw the dent it left in the wall and scratch on the paintwork…

Most importantly, he didn’t hear anymore buzzing. 


	4. Bargaining

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I haven't gotten round to replying to comments just yet ! I really appreciate them and will get there!!

Everything was a blur.

The road, the sidewalk, the cars around him - Victor barely saw them, driving more out of instinct than skill. The Ferrari roared down the street, Victor feeling the power beneath his foot on the accelerator, fingers twitching around the steering wheel in a white knuckled grip as he weaved recklessly through the traffic. 

He didn’t care. He didn’t care about much. He wasn’t even sure how he’d gotten there, only just remembering sitting in the flat that morning and feeling such utter despair like he hadn’t known since Yuuri had first gone. 

Yuuri’s pictures still stared at him in the flat, happy memories from when he’d been alive, from their competitions, their wedding, happy days gone by…

_ Gone. _

Victor hadn’t been able to take it.

He knew storming down the streets in a ridiculous car at a speed that would likely get him killed wouldn’t help, wouldn’t make him feel any better.

But he’d resigned himself to the fact that maybe - just maybe - it wasn’t going to get any better. He couldn’t see how he’d ever be happy without Yuuri. Months had passed and though everyone had always said it would get easier with time, it hadn’t. It was worse. Every day was worse. Colder. More lonely. A hole in Victor’s heart that Yuuri had ripped open and left empty in his absence. He’d never be whole again. Not without Yuuri. 

He wasn’t sure how he was going to bear it. The thought of waking up alone every day for the rest of his life, never seeing Yuuri again… it was unbearable. He couldn’t imagine how long the days would be, how lonely the years. He’d only been through months of widowhood and already he felt like he could barely go on. He’d trade anything to stop the next sunrise, to not have to go through another lonely morning.

So that was what he was doing - anything. Anything to drown out the inevitable, the madness that loomed closer everyday, even if it was stupid, even if it was dangerous, even if it might kill him-

He had nothing left to live for anyway. 

He could barely see through his tears anymore, road and cars blurring into nothing but mashes of colour through his windscreen.

It was dangerous.

The wheel was tense beneath his white knuckled grip.

The roar of the engine drowned out the screaming in his head.

The heartskip of danger wrenched his mind away from Yuuri for just a moment as he tried to concentrate on the road, weaving through the cars at the speed of light. He was going too fast. Way too fast. He was surprised the police weren’t following him. It wouldn’t matter even if they were. He wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.

He could feel it in his bones. He was barely in control anymore, hands shaking around the wheel, breath hitching in his lungs and fear striking deep in his head. The wheels barely gripped the damp road. He barely avoided clipping the cars around him as he dodged lanes. He was already dancing on a knife edge, a miracle he’d gotten that far. He wouldn’t be so lucky forever. 

Muscle memory and instinct had kept him alive. As he blinked through his tears at the crowded traffic lanes looming ahead of him though, he could feel it slipping away, numbness washing in and loosening his fingers around the wheel.

He could let go.

He could let go and let the world burn, him with it. He could total the car. He could crash it into the river. He could ride off the bridge in a flying leap through the air...

A part of him wanted it, to go out in a blaze of fiery inferno fitting of the rage and anguish burning away in his chest. The urge to destroy was still there every waking moment, chipping away at his sanity. 

He could do it. He didn’t exactly have much to live for anymore. Here, he was alone. On the other side was Yuuri, maybe waiting for him, maybe wanting Victor to join him too... 

All it would take was a flick of his wrist, hit a tire on the curb, flip the car, crash into a building - anything! - anything quick. It could be over before he knew it. It probably wouldn’t even hurt - even if it did, it couldn’t possibly hurt more than it did already, waiting for Yuuri to walk through that door every dreadful day and tell him it was all a bad dream … but then Yuuri never did.

He was never coming back.

His fingers tightened around the steering wheel, teeth gritting tight. He could do it. The next time he blinked, the road was a fraction clearer. He could see the cars thickening ahead of him, traffic building. 

Victor could just … not stop.

His foot tensed over the accelerator.

In his head, he could see Yuuri - his last bright smile, their last morning kiss in bed  _ that  _ day, the flush on his cheeks the day they’d gotten married… the air punched out of Victor’s lungs as he remembered, gasping, pain in his chest so sharp it was  _ agony.  _ He could end it. He could end it all right then. He wanted to see  _ him  _ again. He was ready. He’d do anything. He was ready to-

_ No, he wasn’t. _

The thought cut through his consciousness like a knife and suddenly, Victor couldn’t breathe. His fingertips tingled, shuddering around the wheel. 

And the car was still speeding.

He didn’t want to die.

Victor wrenched the wheel to the side, barely blinking through his tears. A horn blared - he’d nearly clipped a car, he realised, not remembering to look - not remembering anything. He slammed on the brakes. The tires squealed, screaming in protest. They weren’t the only ones. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t-

The car slipped.

Victor felt his heart jump into his mouth as the back of the car lurched with his next lane change, the tail spinning, hands fumbling at the wheel to try and fight it.

Everything flashed in front of his eyes, fear gripping him by the throat. He was going to die, he thought in panic, feeling the car slip out of his control, feeling the pressure under his fingertips as the car struggled to cling to the road. He was still going fast. It was nothing but luck that still kept the tires on the road. 

He couldn’t remember anything. Not what to do, not what he was thinking - not even Yuuri! Nothing existed but his panic lodged as a lump in his throat, the roaring pound of blood in his ears and the aching of his heart in his chest, beating a lifetime of heartbeats like it was cramming, like it was using them up before it was too late-

The car stopped suddenly.

It slammed to a halt with a squeal and a crash, Victor thrown forward and his chest careering into the steering wheel. His head bounced off the windshield, vision going dark.

For a moment, everything was quiet.

Nothing felt real. The ringing in his ears, the dull pulse of blood through his veins, even the crushing pain in his ribs - he could feel it, but he couldn’t  _ feel _ it. For a moment, he thought he’d succeeded. Perhaps he was dead.

But then the ringing got louder and louder until it was deafening inside his head and he groaned, barely hearing the sound from his own lips. He could hear the hiss of the engine though, see the thin rise of white steam from the bonnet as he peeled his eyes open again. Pain shot through his temples the minute he did though, wincing at the light and the noise. What was the noise? Screaming - a horrific loud screaming that had him scrunching his face to block it out, arms too heavy to lift to block his ears. What was it? What - oh, he realised dumbly, slumping back weakly from the steering wheel - the horn.

The noise stopped - but then the pain came flooding back. He could feel his ribs were hurt, bruised at the least and broken at worst, could feel the throbbing in his head and warm touch of blood matting his hairline. His mouth tasted like copper. Maybe he’d bitten his tongue in the crash.

He hadn’t been paying attention.

Beside him, the car door wrenched open. Victor didn’t really know what was happening, turning his head a second later than he should, brain foggy, and thick, and-

“Victor!”

_ Yura. _

He recognised the voice before he recognised the face, the green eyes coming into focus a second later, blonde hair swaying loose around Yuri’s chalk white face. Victor could barely concentrate on him, head hurting more the more he tried to focus.

“Victor…” 

A fingertip gingerly touched the blood at Victor’s forehead and Victor winced, air sucking loudly through his teeth. The hand withdrew. Surely, Yura would take him to the hospital, he reasoned with an inward groan. He’d take him to a doctor, get him patched up, take him home and tell him that it’s okay, that it would get easier, maybe hold Victor as he inevitably broke down again and again-

“Victor, what the  _ fuck  _ was that?!”

Victor blinked at the blunt question - he hadn’t expected that.

“Get out!” Yura all but yelled, hand fisting in the front of Victor’s shirt and hauling him out. “Get out of the fucking car! What the fuck were you thinking?!” When he slammed the door shut behind him, Victor heard the whole car rattle dangerously. 

He could barely stand when Yura let him go, knees feeling weak beneath him and head feeling light enough that a puff of wind might bowl him over. He staggered back, hand bracing on the car to hold him up. He blinked dumbly at nothing. He wasn’t even sure what had happened. He wasn’t even sure where he  _ was. _

Actually, he had  _ no idea _ where he was.

But he was starting to understand what had happened. Black tyre tracks ribboned the road behind the car, the back of which was currently embedded deep into the side of a lamppost. 

On the sidewalk, people were stopping and staring. They looked shocked. Honestly, it was a miracle Victor hadn’t hit anyone. One lady looked deathly pale though, like Victor hadn’t been far from it. He should go and help, he thought. He should check that she was okay…

He took one step - eyes unfocused - and his legs crumpled.

* * *

The church pew was hard and unforgiving beneath him, Victor sat back because he was too weak to go anywhere else. Even to get there, Yura had had to sling Victor’s arm over his shoulder and half drag him. They hadn’t called an ambulance. Victor still hadn’t decided if that was a good or a bad thing.

He stared down quietly at his knees, watching beads of water drip off the ends of his wet bangs from the napkin of ice he held to his forehead. It was all he’d been given. Yura had refused to let anyone give him any more fuss than that.

In a way, he was grateful. 

He didn’t want a fuss. He didn’t want people asking what was wrong, because one question always led to another, and eventually they would find out what had driven Victor to his car that morning, they’d look at him with that pitying stare that he simply couldn’t stand and walk around him like he was as delicate as glass. He hated it. Maybe because it was true and he really was that fragile without Yuuri - but he didn’t want to be reminded of it so constantly, everytime rubbing fresh salt in the bitter wound. 

Yura had brought him to a church. Victor didn’t know it - not that he’d ever really been to many churches to know outside weddings and funerals. He’d never believed. He’d never needed to.

The place was quiet. The choir was singing at the front, their voices soft and angelic as they sang praises that Victor didn’t understand to a God he didn’t believe in. He shouldn’t be here, he thought to himself, pressing his eyes shut. It was wrong. It was so, so wrong. He didn’t belong there. 

“Do you…” he heard himself start to ask anyway. “Do you think God could bring Yuuri back? You know, if he…” he sucked in a deep breath, throat tight. “If he was out there.”

He shouldn’t say it. He knew it was dumb. But people always said that about God, right? That he performed miracles, that he was good... 

What if he could do it for Yuuri?

Victor would do anything.

He lifted his head, staring up past the choir to the elegant tall windows behind them and the golden statue of a crucified Christ that led the head of the church, wondering. Just wondering - albeit with an aching heart.

He knew it was probably too little too late anyway. He couldn’t ask - and even if he could, why would any God ever listen to him? He’d never spent a minute of his life in church. He’d never once even bothered to entertain the thought of a higher power because he’d simply never needed to. He’d always had everything. He’d never needed to ask for help. To ask now, only when he needed something… it was selfish. Too selfish. Too late. He knew that - but if he could, he would go back and believe anything if that might mean Yuuri had a chance at still being alive today. He would do  _ anything _ . 

Beside him though, Yuri just ‘tsk’ed. “Don’t be stupid,” he muttered, folding his arms stiffly across his chest.

Victor’s head dropped, defeated.

Yura was right - it was stupid.

… but it had been all the only hope he had left.

He wasn’t sure what to do anymore. He was out of options. Dying wasn’t an option. Living wasn’t an option. If even divine intervention couldn’t help him, Victor wasn’t sure what else there was. 

He felt ragged, exhausted from his never ending grief. A part of him wanted to let it go … but it was impossible. His grief was tied to Yuuri and Yuuri was tied to him, even if it was just the memory that was left. It would never go away. It would never end. Victor wasn’t sure how he could possibly bear it, so desperate for someone to save him, to take it away -

“I used to think like that after grandpa died,” Yura finally said quietly, breaking the silence between them. “That was why I started coming here. It helped.” His head turned a fraction, eyes falling to glare sadly at Victor’s knees. “But it… it doesn’t work like that, Victor.”

Victor swallowed thickly, every word like a knife through his chest. 

“I wish I’d never said all those things to him,” Yura went on, voice fragile. His hands curled into fists in his lap. “All the names a-and the insults…. I never meant it - n-not really. I just…”

Out of the corner of his eye, Victor caught Yura angrily rub the back of his hand over his eyes, panic flashing through his system. He couldn’t bear Yura crying. He couldn’t - he didn’t have the feeling to spare to feel bad for Yura and even if he did, he wouldn’t know how to help. He never did - that had been Yuuri’s job.

Even when Yura’s grandfather had died, he’d been useless. He’d been totally at a loss for what to do when they’d gotten that fateful phone call, Yura a sobbing, broken mess with nobody else to turn to but them. Victor hadn’t been much help. But Yuuri… Yuuri had kept a friendly arm around the boy day and night, hadn’t said anything while Yura cried into his shirt, knowing that nothing could be said to make it easier, that all he could do was be there for him.

Yuuri had always been so much better at those things than Victor. Even after so many years of marriage, Victor still hadn’t even known what to do when even  _ Yuuri  _ had cried let alone anybody else...

Yura’s back bobbed with silent sobs beside him, Victor trying desperately to remember what Yuuri did to help, what he had said… but then even  _ thinking  _ about him sent stabs of pain shooting through his chest and he could barely gasp for air himself let alone help Yura with his. His eyes stung - but no tears fell. He had nothing left anymore. He was exhausted.

After a moment, Yura finally straightened up, sniffing. 

“I-I still call his phone, you know,” he said, voice trembling dangerously. “Just to hear his voice on the voicemail-” His voice cracked and he shook his head, sniffling. “How stupid is that? I just wish I could tell him ...h-how sorry I was...”

_ It wasn’t stupid at all _ , Victor wanted to say, hands curling into fists and jaw clenching. If anything, he’d wished he’d had the same idea... 

The hitch in Yura’s breath registered a second too late in Victor’s brain though, not sinking in until the boy was already doubling over beside him and his back heaved with quiet, ragged sobs, his fingers curled in his long blond hair.

Victor swallowed the lump in his throat, not knowing what to do.

How could he - he didn’t even know how to cope with his own grief, let alone anybody else’s! Even at Nicolai’s funeral, Yuuri had been the chief comforter for Yura, not Victor.

Victor guessed that Nicolai’s death hadn’t been much of a shock though. He’d been ill for a long time before he’d eventually passed, remembering how Yura spent every day with him at the hospital when the end had neared, even if it had left him exhausted for practise. He hadn’t cared, and rightly so. 

But nobody could have predicted what had happened to Yuuri. Nobody had been prepared. Nobody had been ready, least of all Victor. 

And Yura, it seemed.

He knew the two had been close - but it had always been something between the two of them that he could never be a part of. He understood that. Yuuri had a different bond with Yura than Victor had. He wasn’t sure if it was an age thing, or a new generation of competitors, or their same fighting spirits, or the fact that Yura had clearly had as much of a raging crush on Yuuri as Victor had from that first Sochi banquet… but there had been  _ something _ .

And now it was just gone, and Victor had never so much as even asked if Yura was okay since Yuuri had died. 

He hadn’t cared, because his pain had hurt more.

But now he  _ saw  _ it.

Guilt churned in his gut as he sat up, feeling his heart strings pull watching Yura cry beside him. He had never looked so small, Victor couldn’t help think. 

He didn’t know what to do. There was nothing he could say - what could he say? That it was okay? They both knew it would be a lie, so what was the point? Yura had seen first-hand Victor’s near suicidal response to the fact that everything was very much not okay, and Victor wouldn’t want to disillusion him into any less. It wasn’t okay without Yuuri. He wouldn’t devalue his husband by pretending that it was.

But for the first time, it  _ really  _ sank in that Victor wasn’t the only one grieving. He wasn’t the only one who had loved Yuuri.

“They’ve stopped now though,” Yura finally sniffled, lifting his tear stained eyes and bracing his elbows on his knees. His breaths were still shaky. “I guess the phone finally died…”

Victor didn’t say anything. 

It wasn’t like he could tell Yura the truth - that the phone hadn’t just died, that he’d destroyed it in a fit of rage when the crescendo of grief had overwhelmed him. He couldn’t say it; that the phone wasn’t dark and quiet on the kitchen counter and that it was actually cracked and shattered in the abandoned corner of the living room instead…

He felt sick with guilt. If he’d have known those calls were Yura, what they’d meant to him, then he never would have… but no, he would have anyway, Victor corrected himself shamefully before he could even finish the thought. He hadn’t cared - not even for Yura.

He wished he had paid more attention.

They stayed through the evensong service. 

And even though Victor didn’t believe, even though he knew it was hopeless, he still pressed his eyes shut in prayer, begging, pleading to anybody above who might be listening for one last miracle. 

* * *

After the service, Yura took Victor home. 

He wasn’t surprised when Victor broke down in the car, the shock finally wearing off and  _ everything _ else crashing into him all over again. He screamed and cried, crumpled up into the car door until Yura had gently pried it open when they’d gotten to Victor’s apartment and Victor had all but fallen into Yura’s arms.

He’d barely been able to stand, Yura helping him up to his apartment with a sturdy arm around the older man’s shoulders and patient steps.

He didn’t say a word.

He didn’t need to.

Victor cried in Yura’s arms on the couch until he slipped into something as close to sleep as he could get; something wide eyed and vacant, not quite awake, not quite asleep, numb, and spaced out. He didn’t look in pain at least, the closest thing Yura had seen to peace in Victor’s expression since Yuuri had died.

He didn’t leave straight away.

Instead, he stayed.

The sun sank outside and the world beyond the window turned dark but Yura still sat, fingers combing gently through Victor’s hair the way he knew Yuuri had used to do for him. He didn’t know if it was helping. He didn’t dare ask.

He looked around the flat in the silence, drinking in the details afresh. Traces of Yuuri were still littered around the place, right down to the stupid candle on the table that Yuuri had brought home from the dollar store, and the dumb armchair in the corner, Yura remembering the argument Yuuri and Victor had had about the ugly colour not fitting in with the colour scheme on the wall-

The wall that had a dent in it.

Yura frowned, eyes dipping back down to Victor. His eyes had shut now at least. What had he done?

He looked up again, following the dent in the wall lower and lower, down until he caught the shimmer in the light of shattered glass on the floor and his breath caught - a phone. He could guess whose it was.

His jaw was set as he gently moved away from Victor, standing up slowly from the couch to not disturb him. He didn’t want a fight. Instead, he just padded over carefully across the room, steps silent and heart aching in his chest. He recognised the dumb blue phone case wrapped around the edge of the phone, knowing it was Yuuri’s - and when he saw the imperfections on it that weren’t Yuuri’s, something stung.

When he gingerly picked the phone up, he realised exactly what must have happened to it in the subway. The back of the case had half melted, the plastic cooling back together in jagged waves, fibres of material from what Yura guessed had been the shirt Yuuri had been wearing that day melded into the plastic. Black marks burned the sides, charred from heat and smoke. 

It made tears well fresh in Yura’s eyes, a lump catching in his throat. If this had been the phone, he could only imagine what had happened to Yuuri.

He glanced back at Victor on the couch. 

_ And Victor had had to see it,  _ he realised with a heavy heart. Victor had been there, had identified the body, had been  _ there… _

His fingers curled around the phone instinctively, jolting when the shattered screen crackled under the pressure. He wondered if that had happened in the explosion. Judging from the dent in the wall, he guessed not.

He thumbed the on button on the side, jabbing a few times when the screen stayed black. He wanted it to turn back on. He desperately wanted it to flicker back to life again, knowing that his lifeline was attached to this phone, his one coping mechanism connected to its non-existent battery life. 

The phone wasn’t destroyed at least. Cracked, sure, but not destroyed. Maybe there was still hope. Maybe there was a chance…

He found a charger - Yuuri had always kept a spare in the drawer in the kitchen - plugging it in by the kettle and waiting. He held his breath, counting the seconds. He  _ prayed  _ it worked. Having it so close again made him realise just how desperately he wanted it back, how much he  _ needed _ it back. He needed to hear Yuuri’s voice again. He wasn’t ready to let go-

The screen flickered to life behind the cracks, Apple logo shattered and flickering - but alive. 

Yura smiled, not realising he’d been crying until he tasted salt. Something inside him flickered back to life too.


	5. Depression

When Victor drifted awake sometime in the late hours of the morning the next day, Yura had long gone. _ It was fine _ , Victor told himself as he slowly blinked, eyes misty and wet. He was crying already. 

He hadn’t expected Yura to stay.

There wasn’t much to stay for after all. Victor vaguely remembered crying, and clutching, and feeling a harrowing pain in his chest so brutal it was like he’d been having a heart attack. He hadn’t been though. It was just grief, still crushing and potent, like an anchor on his chest and a hot poker swirling around his gut.

Though, that might have been the hunger. He can’t have eaten anything for a good eighteen hours by his estimation - and even then it had only been some measly crackers.

He made no effort to move though.

What was the point?

His limbs felt sucked into the plush of the couch, the softness drawing him in. He didn’t want to get up, letting himself sink further into the couch’s embrace.

He only moved to reach for the bottle of vodka he knew to be lurking around the foot of the couch, fingers batting clumsily before they found it. Victor took a small sideways sip, just small enough to avoid spilling it all over himself. He had some small dignity left at least…

The alcohol warmed his chest with every swallow, Victor welcoming the familiar light-headedness washing over him. It had come quicker than usual. His empty belly would probably have something to do with that. He felt thin lately – not so much in how he looked, though he knew his clothes were looser than they used to be, but  _ inside _ . He felt thin. Fragile. Delicate.

And above all, he just felt so  _ tired _ of it all, the weariness dragging behind his eyes with every waking moment.

He wanted it all to stop.

He was just drained from being broken all the time, so fed up of sadness. He could never move on from Yuuri. He could never forget. And even if he could, he didn’t think it would make a difference now anyway.

Because it wasn’t just Yuuri anymore.

Before, Victor had thought of Yuuri and he’d burst into tears, messy and bitter, emotions swelling in his chest until he could barely breathe.

Now, he just felt… numb.

The sadness was more a dull, crushing ache than the stabbing heartache it had begun as, Victor’s eyes blinking slowly around the leaking tears and pulse weak in his veins. He barely felt anything anymore. He barely felt alive. Those brief moments of painful clarity brought some relief if anything, that he  _ was _ still alive, that he  _ could _ still feel something even if it hurt…

But it wasn’t enough.

He couldn’t imagine facing every day like this; dull, cold, exhausted …

His eyes drooped, the living room starting to spin around him slightly. He couldn’t quite pass out just yet, suspended in that cruel limbo between wakefulness and unconsciousness, feeling sick to his stomach.

Maybe he should take some of his sleeping pills – just to help him drift off, keep him under just a little bit longer in blissfully ignorant sleep.

He’d barely touched the bottle since the doctor had given it to him, not wanting the help, not wanting to numb the pain then… now he would rather have the pain than this, than the empty, silent nothing... 

It was more than he could bear.

He rolled off the sofa, groaning quietly as he slumped on the floor. He stayed there for a moment, wondering if he should even bother to move.

What was the point?

What was the point in anything?

He wasn’t sure how long it took for him to pick himself up, limbs like lead and head feeling as heavy as a cannon on his shoulders. He just wanted it all to stop - was that too much to ask? Maybe he should make it stop, he thought quietly to himself as he pulled open a drawer in the kitchen. The pills weren’t there. He opened another. Maybe he should make it stop and go back to one of the train stations like the one that had started this mess and just… not stop.

He saw it in his mind’s eye, peaceful and terrible at the same time. He imagined himself walking down the stairs, the subway fairly empty, nobody sparing him a second glance as the train rattled closer and Victor kept walking - just kept walking - past the people, over the line as the train lights flashed out of the corner of his eye, and he stepped off the platform and-

He gasped, the glass tumbler he’d been holding slipping through his fingers with a smash. The crash echoed in Victor’s ears, vision spinning.

Pain flared along his ankle, warmth running down his bare foot.

He didn’t have to look down to know what it was.

His fingers trembled.

And then he  _ heard  _ it. 

Not the roar of the train, or the scream of passengers, or the shrill of brakes, but something much, much worse - Yuuri’s ringtone.

Victor’s soul whimpered.

He glanced across the kitchen counter, following the sound. It didn’t take long to find it.

Yuuri’s phone - shattered and cracked - buzzed on the tabletop, factory setting ringtone singing cheerily. Victor felt the blood drain from his face as he saw it, screen flashing mocking at him.

It hurt to hear.

He remembered the day they got the phone, so painfully clear. The way Yuuri’s nose had scrunched when he’d heard the standard ringtone. How he’d laughed when Victor had suggested he change it. That he’d said that he always just kept it on vibrate anyway so it didn’t matter…

Victor’s knuckles went white as he gripped the table top.

It mattered now.

It mattered and Victor hated Yuuri and missed him in equal parts for somehow making that sound that had only graced their life once a new painful memory. 

His next breath was raw, like barbed wire being dragged through his throat. The corners of his vision went black.

He couldn’t take it.

Victor  _ felt  _ the moment his sanity snapped, practically hearing the ping in his brain the adrenalin racing through his blood like the flourescent light of a glowstick once it had been cracked. Suddenly, he knew exactly what he wanted to do, how to make it stop, how to make it hurt like never before…

He dug through the drawer madly, fingers scraping at the bottom and nails scratching uncomfortably as they caught. He should cut them. Another thing he should have done with his life that meant nothing now.

It was stupid, so stupid…

He searched until his hands were bruised, until his fingers bled and red flecked along his t shirt. The phone had stopping ringing, but Victor could still hear it. He hadn’t ripped it out of the wall this time, letting it live, letting it die, letting it spur him on, heart beating in time to the ringtone.

By the time he found the pills he’d been looking for, he’d found even more too - and a hidden bottle of gin for his trouble.

He popped open the lid of the booze, taking a steadying swing.

His throat felt dry.

He took another sip.

Popping the child lock on the medicine bottle was surprisingly easy. He opened Yuuri’s ones first, one of the extra bottles he’d found. There weren’t many left. Painkillers - from when Yuuri had had that awful throat infection in the winter and gotten better before the meds had ran out. Victor had been glad then. He was even gladder now, feeling a small spark in his chest that his beloved had left some poison behind for him too. 

He tipped the handful into his palm with surprising accuracy, heart racing as he stared down at the little white pills waiting for him.

He hated Yuuri for doing this to him.

He loved him too much to live without him.

Victor didn’t hesitate as he brought his hand to his mouth and knocked back the pills, washing them down with a stinging swig of gin.

_ It wasn’t enough. _

He pawed at his own bottle, wrenching the lid open and hearing the satisfying rattle of tables inside. He pressed his eyes shut, Yuuri’s face swimming in his mind.  _ I love you _ , he told the memory, feeling his heart shudder in his chest. 

He poured the pills into his palm.

He swallowed with a gulp.

He washed them down with a swig of the gin.

He did it again.

_ Pour. _

_ Swallow. _

_ Swing. _

_ Pour. _

_ Swallow. _

_ Swig. _

_ Pour. _

_ Swallow. _

_ Crash- _

Victor heard more than he felt the gin bottle slip out of his numb grasp, vision swaying as he watched the glass shards glitter up at him from his kitchen floor. He should clean it up. He should leave it. He didn’t know what to do anymore. 

His knees quaked beneath him and he buckled, slipping to the glass ridden floor in a clumsy tangle of limbs. 

Pain needled through his palms, the sweet, delicate pain of shattered glass digging into skin. 

It reminded him of the pain  _ that day _ , when he’d been thrown to the ground, grit cutting his hands then to catch his fall. He whimpered at the memory, heart stuttering in his chest.

He reached up along the cabinet door, to anchor himself, to pull himself up-

His hand slipped, leaving a trail of red in its wake.

Victor fell back, head smacking against the kitchen tiles with a crack. His eyes lolled, bile clawing its way up his throat.

He didn’t want to be sick.

He didn’t want to be alive.

He didn’t want to be anything without Yuuri…

He didn’t fight when it came, closing his eyes willingly in surrender. He embraced the chasing darkness and let it take him.

* * *

When Victor next opened his eyes, he was blinded. Bright white light beamed down on him and he winced, turning his face away and moving to shield his eyes. He cried out before he could even lift his arm an inch from his side though, pain rippling through him.

It was sharp in his arm - like the sting of the needle - and a deep ache ran through the rest of his body, weighing down his limbs and making his head throb. 

He pinched his eyes shut, groaning away from the light.

It only made him more aware of the pain in his body, and… other things. The beeping, for example, quiet yet sharp in his ear. His mouth was dry, throat feeling thick and swollen. He tried to swallow, to moisten his tongue - it  _ hurt _ , Victor regretting the decision instantly as his throat convulsed in pain. He couldn’t move - everything hurt too much to move. The taste of vomit lingered in his mouth. He didn’t remember being sick.

He didn’t remember anything.

He only remembered being in his apartment, crying, and drinking in his misery like he always did, only this time he’d found-

He remembered the pills.

The quiet beeping mocked him.

Suddenly, he knew exactly where he was -  _ hospital _ . He was in a hospital. And that could only mean one thing...

“You’re awake.”

_ Yura. _

It wasn’t a question.

Victor didn’t bother acknowledging it.

He just pressed his eyes together and  _ felt _ . Felt the hurt, the regret, the desperation. He didn’t want to be alive to feel it. He’d wanted to be gone…

Yura must be close, Victor reasoned. His voice was quiet but it sounded like thunder in Victor’s ears, head throbbing at the short, curt words. They hurt - made his brain pulse painfully in his skull to hear them. He hadn’t wanted this. He’d wanted the stillness, the silence, not…  _ this. _

“What were you  _ thinking _ ?”

Victor knew exactly what he’d been thinking - and he bitterly regretted that he’d failed. He wondered what he’d done wrong. Not enough gin? Not enough pills? There had to be something, something he could change for next time…

“Yakov found you.”

_ Ah _ , Victor thought. That would have done it. Yakov never had ever let him take the easy way out...

“He was really shook up by it,” Yura went on, voice trembling. “He had a heart attack on your doorstep - not that you care, I suppose.”

Victor’s breath hitched, eyes snapping open to the white ceiling.  _ No…  _ of all the things he meant to do, he couldn’t possibly lose Yakov too. Not Yuuri and Yakov. He couldn’t lose his love and father figure. He couldn’t. He’d never meant to hurt Yakov - just to take himself out. If Yakov had gone while Victor had lived-

“He’s still alive.”

Victor breathed a sigh of relief.

“He’s in the ward upstairs, recovering. It’s bad though.” 

Of course it was bad - Yakov was an old man as it was, nevermind all the stresses Victor and Yuri had put him through over the years. Nevermind how Victor’s loss had made him worry over his former pupil more than ever before. Nevermind that in reality, Victor was like a son to him and for Yakov to find him collapsed in the kitchen in a shower of glass, grey skinned and barely breathing…

“I can’t believe you would do something so selfish!” Yuri went on, mercifully cutting Victor’s throughs short. “No, actually - I can. You never thought about anyone but yourself - even when he was alive!”

_ He. _

_ Yuu- _

_ No,  _ Victor cut himself off, tears stinging behind his eyelids. He couldn’t think of the name, he couldn’t bear to think of it. He wasn’t sure if he could bear it, trapped on a hospital bed with thoughts of  _ him _ swirling around his head.

Yuri wasn’t giving him a choice.

“He didn’t have a choice, you know! He didn’t want to go! But you - you  _ chose  _ this - you  _ wanted  _ to do this to us!”

Victor had chosen it. He didn’t regret choosing it. How could he? Yuri didn’t understand. He didn’t understand what it meant to lose someone like Yuuri, to a part of yourself like you did when someone like Yuuri was ripped away. It was a fate worse than death. Living through it was worse than dying, harder than dying. 

He didn’t want to be alive to think it. He wanted to stop thinking - dead, asleep - anything! Anything to  _ stop him thinking- _

“It’s supposed to hurt when they go, you fucking cretin!” Yuri was all but screaming now, voice hitching traitorously. “It means they meant something! You don’t get to kill everyone else along the way though!”

Yuri had loved Yuuri, Victor knew. He knew it, remembering the guilt when Yuri had cried in the church, when he’d broken down, when he’d admitted how much he’d missed him… but he clearly didn’t miss him enough, Victor thought coldly, focusing dully on the faint beat of his heart in his chest. He wished it would stop. If Yuri did, maybe he’d understand…

Chair legs scraped against the floor, the sound piercing. Victor peeled his eyes open at last, gaze level and dull.

It took a few blinks for the world to fill in. 

When it did, he saw Yuri stood at his bedside, chair pushed back behind him. Green eyes stared down at him like ice chipped emerald, cold and merciless.

Victor didn’t blame them.

“I’m not sticking around for this,” Yuri said, voice deathly quiet again. “When you get out of here, I want you to lose my number. I don’t want to see you again.”

Victor fought the urge to wince, the traitorous heart monitor machine betraying the way his pulse quickened in panic. He forced himself to ignore it though, gritting his jaw shut tight. He wouldn’t beg. He wouldn’t cry. What was the point? He was never supposed to see Yura again anyway. He’d just never imagined it would be with spite in his eyes and words barbed.

He blinked up to the ceiling, blinking fast and trying to focus on breathing steady as blonde hair flashed across the room and something crashed - the chair hitting the wall probably, he thought, swallowing thickly. It hurt, not bothering to hide his wince this time.

What was the point? 

He blinked until his eyes ached, forcing his chest to rise and fall with slow, measured breaths until his ribs hurt. He focused on the sound of the air pushing in and out of his nose, trying to concentrate on that rather than Yura’s words bouncing around in his head-

Then he noticed the beep of a second heart monitor.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of another bed on the other side of the room. His mouth ran dry.  _ Please no _ , he thought, not ready to face the consequences of his actions. Not yet.

“Y-Yakov?”

There was no answer.

“Hey,” he called out at the nurse as she walked in and back tracked at the discarded chair, knowing it was rude. Not caring. He couldn’t care, not when- “W-who is that?”

Surely, Yura wouldn’t let them put him and Yakov in the same room, surely he wouldn’t be that cruel-

“Patient from the subway attack,” she said, righting the chair again. Victor sighed in relief, head dropping back. “We didn’t have enough rooms. You’re going to have to share, I’m afraid.”

“Okay,” he breathed, eyes fluttering shut. “That’s okay…”

_ It wouldn’t matter for long anyway. _

“He doesn’t talk, if that helps,” she went on. “He’s in a coma. Used to be in intensive care. We kept him under until the swelling in his brain went down but took him off the meds a while ago. Still hasn’t woken up. We’re not sure what else we can do for him really...” 

She sounded sad, sorry for him. Victor didn’t feel much - not beyond the sharp stab of pain that jolted through his chest at the mention of the attack, the centre of his collapsing world...

“Has he got a name?”

“No,” her voice sounded wistful. “Just a John Doe.”

A John Doe… nobody to miss him, nobody to mourn him, nobody to scream in pain that he was gone… Victor envied him, heart aching in his chest for that same privilege. 


	6. Acceptance

“I miss him,” Victor said to the silence, hearing nothing but the heart monitor machine answer him. “I miss him so much  _ all the time _ and I-” his breath hitched, pressing his eyes shut for a moment. They felt wet. Victor didn’t bother trying to hold them back. Nobody would see. “I  _ can’t _ do this without him.”

_ This. _

Living.

He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The hospital clung to him, wanting to monitor the condition of his stomach and heart since he’d been brought in and that was even without being on  _ watch. _ Suicide watch. Victor should have been smarter than to think they didn’t know better.

He could probably leave, he thought. If he really wanted to. He wasn’t sure for sure, but he was pretty certain he could leave if he wanted to. It would take arguing, and paperwork, and a lot of criticism … and even the thought of it was exhausting. So instead, Victor just lay back in bed, surrendered to the ache in his heart and waited.

And talked.

“His name was Yuuri,” he heard himself say, voice thick. He dug his thumbnail into his fingertip, enjoying the pinprick of pain. It wasn’t enough. “Yuuri Katsuki.”

He could still hurt himself.

He could bite his tongue.

Choke himself with his drip.

Rip the needle out of his arm and put it to better use.

… but what was the point?

He’d be stopped before anything would work and Victor wasn’t trying to make it hurt more, he just wanted it to  _ stop. _ All he could do was wait. Be good, wait until he was discharged, and then… well, then he wasn’t sure.

He hadn’t thought that far ahead.

Yura hadn’t come back. Victor hadn’t expected him to. He’d done enough to the poor boy and this had been the final straw. He understood. It made the silence stark though, the white walls blinding when they were all to see. With Yura gone, Yakov bedridden, and the thought of facing Yuuri’s family about what had happened simply unbearable, there was nobody else to talk to.

Except the John Doe.

“He was …  _ perfect _ ,” Victor gasped the word out, nothing else but that one simple word to describe his husband. Ex-husband. Dead husband. 

Victor’s throat felt tight at the thought.

They’d given him his phone.

Victor wasn’t sure where they’d gotten it from but he didn’t care much, switching it off and stashing it away. He didn’t want to talk to anyone about what happened. He didn’t want to read about it. He didn’t want to acknowledge the world outside those four walls existed because then he would have to accept that it really  _ did  _ exist and that he was still painfully alive.

The guy in the bed next to him didn’t need to know any of it though, was never bored of his never ending existential crisis. He didn’t know what was happening.

Victor wondered who he was. He couldn’t see his face. The nurses kept his curtain drawn across the head of the bed, so Victor could only see the fall of the bed sheet over his feet and ankles at the bottom of the bed. It wasn’t much company. He still found himself looking over at those ankles more often that he was proud of though, heart half aching for the companionship.

Maybe that was why he kept talking, even though there was no one listening. Maybe, he just didn’t want to be alone. 

“We used to make pancakes for breakfast on the weekends.”

Victor eyed the nutrients drip hung up by his bedside, glaring at it out of the corner of his eye. He wasn’t hungry but he’d rather be strangled a sandwich down his throat than be on the drip…

It was better than his friend’s though. He didn’t get a drip - he got a tube. Victor could hear him sometimes, coughing and choking when it didn’t go in right, the nurse cursing quietly under her breath when it didn’t go smoothly. It made Victor’s skin crawl, listening to it. He hated the IV drip, but the idea of a tube being forced down his airway to feed him… he was glad he was awake.

It didn’t end with the feeding though. The more he watched his friend’s care routine, the more he felt sorry for him. 

He could do _ nothing  _ for himself.

Victor crinkled his nose when the catheter was changed.

He turned away when he was given a sponge bath, wincing at the sound of the water in the container.

He’d watched once while his friend had his exercises done, limbs carefully moved and watching those feet and ankles disappear behind the curtain as the nurse moved his legs for him. They had to move him everyday. Often everyday. Just seeing it once had made Victor uncomfortable, shifting awkwardly in his own bed and stretching his own weak limbs beneath the bed sheets, just to make sure he still could.

He felt guilty for reacting that way, but he couldn’t help it. He knew the man deserved better. He should be awake, at home, watching TV with his wife or kissing his kids goodnight instead of having his basic human needs tended to through a medical tube.

The more he watched though - and the more he listened to nothing but the heart monitor answer his mumblings - the more he pitied the man.

And himself.

He had been stupid.

Yura had been right - he was selfish. He really was. Yuuri hadn’t ever meant to leave him, but Victor fully intended what he’d tried to do. He’d willingly tried to inflict the same crushing pain that was killing him onto Yura and Yakov and he’d gone one step further and put Yakov in the hospital with him too. He’d never wanted to do that. He’d never wanted to hurt Yakov too.

The more he watched his friend, the more he wondered if Yakov was getting the same treatment in another ward, his heart aching at the thought. Victor didn’t even know if he was still alive…

After the first week, Victor asked.

He was still alive, the nurses told him, in the ward upstairs recovering. Victor asked to go see him, eyelashes sticking together with tears.

After the third day of asking, they said yes.

Victor felt weaker than ever clambering slowly into the wheelchair, hands gripping onto anything they could find for support and knees feeling like jelly. He was helpless, feeling numb with horror by the time the nurse wheeled him up to the ward. He had once been a world class athlete, the best of the best…

… how had he sunk so far?

He kept his eyes low as he was wheeled into the ward, not sure if he wanted to see, not sure if he was ready…

The wheelchair stopped, the brakes locked into place.

Victor stared at the bed frame in front of him, feeling his hands shake in his lap. He blinked fast, refusing to cry. He couldn’t cry, not now - not in front of him.

“V-Victor?”

Victor’s heart cracked in his chest, wincing - Yakov sounded so much frailer than he remembered, voice almost unrecognisable.

Victor set his jaw, swallowing his sorrow and gathering his courage - and looked up. If he’d been standing, he would have buckled.

Yakov looked half dead, eyes heavy and face pale. If it wasn’t for the bed half propping him up and his eyes moving dully under heavy eyelids, Victor might have thought he actually  _ was  _ dead. He looked so much smaller than Victor remembered, so much older, so much more vulnerable.

What had he done?

Victor was already crying, tasting the salt on his lips. “I…” he wasn’t sure what he was going to say. What was there to say?

He’d nearly killed Yakov.

“I-I’m so sorry,” he gasped in a rush, feeling the tears flow thick and fast. “I-I never meant… I mean, I didn’t mean… I shouldn’t...”

He slapped a hand over his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut tight. They still leaked, voice cracking behind his fingers with barely contained sobs.

He shouldn’t have come. 

He couldn’t do it, he wasn’t strong enough. He didn’t  _ deserve  _ it. If Yura found out he’d come here, he’d probably come down and choke Victor to death in his sleep himself. 

Yakov wouldn’t want to see him either - why had Victor ever convinced himself that he would?! He was making everything ten times worse, forcing Yakov to look at the mess of a human being that had nearly killed both of them and ruined Yura’s life for nothing...

“You stupid boy,” he growled, Victor flinching at the rough words. He deserved them. “Come here.”

Victor was trembling with fear as he pushed himself up, just barely enough strength in his arms to lift him up from the wheelchair and grip the edge of the bed. He hauled himself up, bony hips aching as the slipped onto the edge of the mattress. 

He didn’t dare look up, eyes on the home knitted blanket draped over his old mentor’s lap and feeling the air catch in his throat.

He knew that pattern.

He had knitted it, two years ago. Yura had always called him an old man and Victor had decided to take up knitting as an ‘old man habit’ just to annoy him, left with an obscene amount of hats and blankets left over by the time he’d been done that they were all everybody got for Christmas that year. He hadn’t known that Yakov had actually kept it. He hadn’t known that it was worth getting Yura to bring it in from home to keep with him in hospital.

It only made Victor feel worse, guilt churning in his gut so sickeningly Victor wondered if his stomach was giving out at last.

Out of the corner of his eye, Yakov’s arm moved.

Victor flinched at what was to come. 

A slap? A punch? He’d only ever seen Yakov hit once before - that hockey player that had tried to beat Victor up in the locker rooms when he’d been just thirteen and had just discovered glittery eyeshadow in the most flamboyant way possible. It hadn’t ended well for the hockey player. Yakov had sprained a wrist.  _ Worth it _ , he had said at the time.

If that was for a random trouble-maker, Victor didn’t even want to think about what he had for the stupid idiot who had nearly killed him…

Yakov’s fingers twisted in the front of Victor’s hospital gown, not strong enough to pull. They tried, fingers slipping through the fabric.

Victor scrunched his eyes shut, bracing himself.

The blow never came.

“I said,” Victor glanced up at the soft voice, catching his mentor’s watery gaze, watching his arms fall open in invitation ...“Come here.”

Victor crumpled.

Yakov  _ never  _ hugged him.

He’d always hugged Yakov - but Yakov had never hugged him, had never been the first to make the move. Victor felt himself tremble as he leaned forward into Yakov’s arms - the man who was like a father to him - feeling his lip quiver dangerously as the warmth swallowed him. He’d always thought that Yakov would be rough, that he’d grip too tight, not be careful enough - and it would have been fine, Victor wouldn’t have complained.

He was wrong though. 

Yakov’s hands were gentle on his back, arms strong yet careful, just the right pressure to be comforting but not hurt Victor’s fragile body. It was perfect.

Victor closed his eyes, savouring the moment.

He might never have it again.

He leaned his head low, letting it rest against Yakov’s chest. He could hear his heart beating. It sounded fast but strong, beating in a steady rhythm that chased the dark thoughts away and steadied his breathing. 

Victor had never felt so grateful. 

He forced his eyes to open as Yakov’s heart rate started to slow, feeling his own match it and tiredness sweep over him. He couldn’t fall asleep here.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Yakov thread a finger along his drip tube. “What have you done to yourself?”

Victor swallowed thickly.

_ This wasn’t going to be fun…  _ “I’m on a drip,” he said, voice weak. “My stomach lining is shot from the pump a-and with all the stuff I put my liver through…” His mouth hovered open for a moment, not sure of the right words. He guessed there was no easy way to say it… “They’re not sure if I’ll need a transplant yet. They’re waiting to find out more about the damage.”

He’d never meant to do this.

He’d never meant to do any of it.

And as he felt Yakov’s hand tighten on his shoulder and heard the quiet thick gulp from his mentor, for the first time, he actually regretted what he’d done.

* * *

Victor quickly decided that when Yakov was well enough to be discharged, he wanted to be the one to help take him home.

He still felt miserable - miserable beyond description - but there was no way he could look Yakov in the eye and say that he willingly wanted to inflict it upon the old man again. He’d survived a broken heart once. Twice - he might not be so lucky. Victor couldn’t do it to him.

He would have to wait until he was out of the hospital to try again, he decided, lying back quietly in his own bed as the days passed dreaming of how he might die when the time came.

It couldn’t look like suicide.

That would be what would kill Yakov, what would make Yura hate him until the day he died too. No, it had to look like an accident somehow, to soften the blow. 

It would be the only way to make the unbearable bearable.

“Maybe a train,” he mused aloud to his silent companion, speaking to the ceiling. As always, only the heart monitor machine answered him. Victor scrunched his face up. “No, that would be too obvious. They’re not stupid. Maybe a car…”

The thing was, he couldn’t take another chance. He couldn’t fail again. If he was going to go through with it, he didn’t want to see Yura’s disappointed face or Yakov’s heartbreak again - he needed it to be final.

And that in itself made him feel inexplicably terrified.

It was what he’d wanted… wasn’t it? 

He’d thought that darkness and silence had been exactly what he’d wanted but now that he really thought about it, and was left alone with his thoughts - well, not  _ alone- _

“I just wanted the pain to stop,” Victor admitted to the ceiling in barely more than a whisper, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes.

He should probably be telling this to a shrink. They had kept him on suicide watch for a reason and Victor was pretty sure one of the doctors had said something about anti depressants in the cocktail of drugs he was being given. They knew he had a problem.  _ He  _ knew he had a problem! He should probably be talking to them about all this, so they could help him…

He found his comatose friend more peaceful though, easier to speak to. There were no judging eyes with him, no fake sympathies, or advice that Victor didn’t want to hear. He just listened.

Well, Victor wasn’t actually even sure if he could even hear him...

He wasn’t even sure if he was really a  _ he. _

The nurse had said John Doe, hadn’t she? Victor pressed his eyes shut, pinching his brow together. He was questioning everything now, nothing certain anymore. He didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t know what to do. 

“You would have liked him,” he croaked, voice barely recognisable even to himself. “Yuuri. Maybe you saw him…”

Not a day went by that Victor still didn’t think about him, about his rosy round cheeks and that shy, sweet smile that was just  _ perfect. _ The ache in his chest wasn’t as sharp as the first day he’d lost him though, wasn’t as heavy as the first week, wasn’t as sour and sickly as the first month. It  _ hurt _ , but it was cruelly bearable now. Victor wasn’t sure if it was the time, or the drugs, or-

“Everyone loved him.” 

His hand moved down to his chest, to his heart - it still beat for Yuuri. It always would. 

“I loved him.”

The ever steady beep of the answering machine was all that came back to him.

* * *

The next day, Victor nearly lost his friend. 

_ “What’s going on?!”  _ he near screamed as panic alarms rang out from across the room, nurses and doctors spilling so thick and fast around his companion’s side that he couldn’t even see the bed let alone the man inside it. The machines were screaming. Doctors were shouting incoherent babble. Victor was frantic, not understanding - only understanding the panic, that something was desperately, desperately wrong.

He yanked his sheets back and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, grabbed the pole holding his drip to support himself as he dragged himself to his feet-

Gentle hands coaxed him back down again, Victor too weak to resist.

“Please,” the nurse all but begged, glancing back over her shoulder. “Stay here. Stay out of the way. Let them work.”

Victor barely heard her, trying to catch a glimpse of the chaos behind her. More than one machine was beeping urgently. What did they all mean? His heart rate? Brain waves? Blood pressure? What else was there? How many ways was his only companion dying?

“What’s happening?”

“I can’t say, I-”

“Please!! Please, just-” Victor whimpered, raking his hands through his hair, not caring when a few ripped out strands clung to his fingers. He couldn’t breathe, panic setting in. “Please no,” he gasped, knees feeling weak beneath him. He’d been getting stronger since seeing Yakov, spending more time strengthening his legs, practising standing and walking again…

All that strength failed him at the thought of being left alone, of losing somebody else. 

Because it wouldn’t just be him. 

It would be someone else in the world too, someone who didn’t know where their husband or boyfriend was, a mother without a son. Someone would lose him. Someone would become a widow, become fatherless, become childless - someone else would feel the same crushing loss that Victor had felt when he had lost Yuuri, and his stomach churned sickeningly at the thought. Nobody should ever have to go through that. If his friend died-

_ “Back in sinus rhythm.” _

Victor had no idea what it meant but he recognised the phrase from the stupid doctor shows Yuuri had always liked watching. His head jerked up, listening for a flat line, for a time to be read out...

It never came.

Instead, a steady beep called out across the room, slow - but strong. The same beep that had answered Victor’s questions, that kept him company in the silence.

Victor wept with relief into the nurse’s arms until he passed out, the kind woman stroking his hair as he slipped away like he was a child. When he woke up, he’d been tucked into bed carefully and the sure beep of the heart monitor across the room gently lulled him back to slumber again. 

* * *

“Please don’t die,” Victor found himself pleading in the middle of the night. “Somebody will miss you. It might hurt now, but for them… it will hurt so much more without you...”

Victor wasn’t sure if his friend could hear him but he hoped so. He hoped he knew that someone cared, that he wasn’t alone, that he had something to live for…

The darkness was all consuming that night. 

There wasn’t a single star in the sky out the window, making Victor feel like he was all alone, his voice bouncing back around the room to himself. It felt strange. He swallowed the lump in his throat though, battling down the thoughts - John Doe’s heart monitor still beeped. He was still there. He hadn’t gone away.

“I don’t want you to die,” Victor admitted with a whisper, still crystal clear through the silence. “Please… stay alive for me.”

* * *

When the doctor told Victor that he didn’t need a liver transplant, he smiled.  _ Actually smiled.  _ It was so unexpected that it hurt his cheeks to do it, flinching at the sting and yelping in surprise. The nurse had jumped to attention beside him, but it had taken a moment to realise exactly what had happened.

Victor had smiled.

He felt happy about something.

* * *

Victor had first felt nothing but absolute horror when Chris had first walked into his room at the hospital, terrified that he was going to react like Yurio had and walk right out of his life too after giving him a piece of his mind… but he hadn’t. 

Instead, he’d just smiled - the bags under his eyes and the weak twitch to his lips saying more than words ever could - and said ‘ _ bonjour’. _

Victor hadn’t realised how much he’d needed just a simple smile and a ‘ _ bonjour’  _ until then.

It was soon after that he’d realised that Chris was missing his wedding band.

“So when is the divorce finalised?” he asked softly,  _ knowing _ .

Chris had been picking at his croissant in the hospital cafe for fifteen minutes, not taking a single bite. His eyes looked dull. Sure, it could have been jet lag, or late nights, but...

“It already is,” Chris finally sighed, giving up on his food. “We’re the world’s most eligible bachelors again.”

Victor felt numb with shock. 

He would never have expected it of Chris and his husband, the most in-love couple that he’d known apart from him and Yuuri. He’d never imagined them breaking up. Never. Why hadn’t he said anything before?

The reason was painfully obvious.

Victor hadn’t been in any state the last few weeks and months to comfort anyone. He’d barely been able to keep himself alive.

He’d even tried to stop that.

No wonder Chris had kept his problems to himself. He’d probably known how on edge Victor was, how little it would take to push him over the edge. It was probably why he’d been so quiet, why he hadn’t been around to help Victor more. He was sorting out his own mess before walking in on Victor’s. Victor appreciated it… but it didn’t help ease the thick tar of guilt settling in his gut.

“Maybe we should just marry each other and be men of misery together,” he mumbled under his breath, only half joking.

Christophe’s lips quirked in the corners.

“Kind offer, cheri,” his eyes got a bit of their sparkle back at last as they glanced up. “But I like to think I’m a little out of your league,” he winked.

Victor pressed his lips together, fighting the smile threatening to crack on his face. It had been so long… so long since he’d heard a  _ joke. _ How long had it been? Months? It felt nice, being treated like normal for a change.

“Queen.”

“Bitch.” 

Victor smiled - he couldn’t help it. Chris always knew how to make him feel better - and the splash of warmth spreading through his chest was definitely making him feel better.

“How are you feeling anyway?” Chris finally asked, leaning forward to brace his forearms on the table. His bright green eyes gleamed. “ _ Really _ ?”

Victor took as deep breath.

He’d tried denial, pretending everything was fine. It had been what had started his spiral into his mess, into this insanity. 

“I’m …” he searched for the right words, throat tight. “Better. I don’t know if I’ll ever really be good but it… it doesn’t hurt like it used to.” It hurt to say it though, to admit it. He hoped Yuuri wouldn’t hate him for it, wherever he was. He just couldn’t do it anymore. “Now I just… miss him.”

Chris’s hand crossed the table. “You can always come home with me,” he said softly. “Have a mini break with me in Switzerland. Masumi’s gone, I have the room… it might do you good. You’re not alone in this.”

Victor nodded, tears clogging up his vision. 

“Thank you,” he choked.

He didn’t move as Chris’s chair legs squeaked on the floor, as a warm solid arm wrapped around his shoulders. Victor let himself be drawn in, guided to bury his face into the soft wool of Chris’s sweater.

Victor reached up, curling his fingers in the front of the garment. It was more than he could bear, heart so full in his chest it felt fit to burst.

“C-Chris?”

“Yes, Victor?”

“I think…” Tears and snot leaked uglily into the sweater. If Chris minded, he didn’t say anything. Victor was glad, feeling his walls finally crumble away at last. “I think I need help.”

* * *

Three days later, Victor was discharged. 

He sat patiently on the edge of his bed in the new clothes Christophe had bought him as the nurse read him his discharge information, twirling his wedding band on the chain around his neck in his fingers. It had been the only thing he’d kept from what he’d come in with, the rest ruined beyond salvation. 

It had been from Yuuri.

“Are you ready?” the nurse asked kindly when Victor had signed the papers, pulling on his coat. It was nicer than the one he had at home…

His eyes drifted across the room, to the curtain.

_ Not quite. _

“Can I … can I say goodbye?”

He bit his lip the minute he’d asked, knowing the answer would probably be  _ ‘no’ _ . Only family were supposed to have visiting rights. The guy should have privacy.

But Victor wasn’t sure how he’d have coped without his friend’s silent presence in the room, without his steady beep of his heart monitor to keep him company. He would have gone mad in the silence. He wouldn’t have had anyone to talk to. It had helped. He wasn’t sure how, but somehow, the comatose John Doe had helped him come to terms with his own suffering, with his loss. 

He wasn’t sure he would have survived without him.

“I know it’s not conventional,” he went on, seeing the nurse’s surprised expression. “But… I’d really like to. Please.”

He wanted to say  _ ‘thank you _ ’, even if that was all he could do.

The nurse had always been soft on him. 

“Okay,” she said, smiling softly. “Just don’t touch anything.”

Victor nodded, following the nurse as she crossed the room.

He took a deep breath.

He’d spent a lot of time wondering what the man looked like. He’d only gotten a glimpse of his ankles before but what precious little he had seen hadn’t been old or shrivelled skin. Smooth and supple ankles - so he was young. How young? Middle aged? Younger? Would his face be wrinkled? Would his face be  _ visible? _ Victor wasn’t even sure of the extent of the man’s injuries, how badly scarred he might be, or worse-

The curtain pulled back...

...Victor’s knees gave out beneath him, collapsing into the bed frame.

The man lying in the bed … was Yuuri.

* * *

**_Two months earlier…_ **

_ Yuuri was smiling as he walked down into the subway, the ghost of Victor’s kiss still on his lips and hands dug cosily into his pockets. He already couldn’t wait for lunch, wondering where his husband would take him. It would hardly matter. Just seeing him would be better than any meal they could ever have. _

_ He was slipping his phone out of his pocket, tempted to send Victor a text with a heart or kissy face, or- _

_ The phone yanked out of his hand. _

_ It took a minute to realise what had happened, fingers clutched around nothing, breath robbed out of his lungs, the hunched figure darting through the crowds ahead of him… _

_ Yuuri choked out a shocked breath and ran after him. _

_ “Hey!” he yelled, watching the white shirt weave through people, fleeing down the stairs. Yuuri ran the same path. “Hey, y-you! Hey- stop that guy! He took my-” _

_ Inside, Yuuri was cringing, face flaming red as people turned to stare at him. _

_ Him - like he was the bad guy. He felt himself shrink inside. He didn’t shout. Even though he was being robbed it still felt wrong to make such a noise, such a disturbance. _

_ But at the same time, that phone had everything. _

_ He’d miss Victor’s text. It had his credit card and driver’s license tucked into the case, even his house key attached on a magnet. _

_ Now, he felt a fool for keeping everything in the same place, watching the thief glance back over his shoulder across the platform. Yuuri drank him in, grasping every bit of information he could. He might need it for the police later if he ever managed to get his phone back from where it was stuffed no doubt in his assailant’s pocket. _

_ He wasn’t tall - about the same height as Yuuri - with short dark hair and slightly tanned skin that looked yellow in the dingey subway lights. His dirty white shirt stood out a mile, eyes dark and unreadable on his flat, round face as he ran onto the waiting train. It was like looking at a severely sleep deprived, drug eyed version of himself. _

_ Yuuri heard the familiar warning sound ring out across the station, fighting his way faster through the crowd. The train was going to go. He was going to lose him- _

_ The last thing Yuuri remembered before the world was swallowed in ash and heat was seeing the thief's eyes widen from the train as he was swallowed in fire.  _

* * *

“Come on … one more step… you’re nearly there…”

Victor couldn’t stop beaming, his cheeks hurting already but not even thinking about smoothing out his smile. How could he? He could feel the warmth from Yuuri’s skin through his hoodie, relished the flush of exertion colouring Yuuri’s cheeks, savouring every gasp of breath his husband huffed… 

Yuuri hadn’t been able to leave as soon as he’d woken up. It had taken time for him to be well enough to go.

His hip had been broken. His leg muscles had wasted away to nothing in hospital. A blow he’d taken to the back of the head made moving and speech difficult even if his body had been able to readily comply. He recognised Victor though, thank God. Ribs had cracked. There was a burn scar on his cheek that they’d been told would never fully heal. Victor didn’t care - his Yuuri was still beautiful. It would be a long recovery as his legs strengthened and he relearned how to walk… but he was alive. Victor had never been more grateful.

Yuuri took his time making his way through the corridor, hobbling himself forward on cumbersome crutches. He already looked exhausted, sweat beading on his brow. It didn’t matter though, Victor thought, swinging the front door open to their apartment.

Yuuri was finally home.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I will have offended someone  
> I'm sorry


End file.
